Yep, agreed.
Probably because the drive would be damaged harshly or filled with god knows what.

And every year, we would probably want to recover this drive too 
It's a treasure that becomes more valuable with each cycle.

If we were in his shoes, we would probably think the same about it.
The struggle has ended, but we would still cling to the possibility of changing the tide of the situation.
So the judge did the correct thing, in my opinion.

Makes me wonder whether there will be some time in the future those Bitcoins are worth so much that the council of the city itself will be willing to put some money aside in order to search for the HDD themselves, if they did and actually found them it would be the biggest plot-twist in this epic story. To be honest, I cannot help but feel bad for that man, he probably cannot longer live a normal life and be okey with himself because all the time and energy he has invested and all the money he (or his gf) literally threw in the trash can.

Also, that ruling implies anything in the land-fill of the city is not longer of the property of their original owner? In my country, of someone seee something useful or something or value in their trash, one first needs to ask for permission before going for it and take it.

It was in October 2024 that I read the news where he sued the council. He lost the case. The judge is rather helping to put him out of his misery. Now, he will no longer hope that he'll find it but has to accept that it is gone and gone forever. What still bugs me is that was this some ignorant error because the bitcoin he has in that hard drive would have been worth more than $300000 in 2013.  If from that time the effort in time, and money he put into finding the hard drive was directed towards buying new bitcoins, as at 2025, the memory of the loss would have been erased and he would have amassed close to amount of bitcoin lost, if not more.

I would imagine this Hard Drive, even if found, might be about impossible to retrieve information from.  Liquids may have poured over it, insects may have damaged it and corrosion may have killed it entirely.  I also imagine a significant portion of the people who work at the said landfill have already heard about the potential Billion Dollars lost in the middle of it and may have desperately looked for his Hard Drive, possibly even damaging it in the process.

The situation of searching through landfill for hidden monetary value seems extremely dystopian and I really think after this time and effort it is all right to accept the defeat.  He will probably not find it or recover any Bitcoin out of it.  And the more he despairs, the more Money it will cost him.  At the end of the road, he might lose both his Bitcoin and a LOT of Money out of his pockets.  It is definitely not worth it if you ask me.

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You honestly sound like you are happy of his suffering only because it provides you an advantage.  It is true that lost Bitcoin provide an advantage to everybody else, but I presume he has his right to try his best to achieve what looks like an impossible dream.

a few things to think about:

city council is publicly funded by tax so its all "our" council, not a private business. so them acting like the hard drive is property of a business and not the community/citizens, seems off.
secondly imagine a vile person that threw a pet in the trash. the city council wont then legally just adopt the animal, instead they would find the owner that put it in the trash and hold them responsible.. so by that analogy/logic, the guy still has some custody/ownership responsibility of things found in landfill

i fully acknowledge and accept the 'environmental'/safety/policy reasoning to deny access, but the wording of them saying its the councils property and thus denying the guy has rights, is a iffy but appeal-able action


but with all that said
although the guy did do research years ago to narrow down a section of the landfill that the truck dumped his trash that day, over time there have been excavators pushing trash around as they turn mounds of trash into spread out thin layers over a wider space, so the hard drive can be anywhere by now

and ofcourse time.. could cause damage, erosion and rust to the hard drive, and with lots of nasty grimy fluid and weather the condition of the hard drive data may not be recoverable

also the workers at the landfill may have done a independent search internally. however no movement of the coins shows its unlikely anyone found the hard drive

so overall its a project to give up on/end attempts.. even though the guy might still think he has a right to fight the court and the dream/delusion of there being a chance of recover

Such a wild story and a reminder of how unforgiving early Bitcoin storage methods were.BTC

You make some excellent points! The city council's position on 'ownership' certainly brings up ethical and legal dilemmas. If the council is meant to represent the public, shouldn't there be some level of public discussion regarding such an important discovery? The comparison to pet ownership is striking—responsibility doesn't just disappear when something is thrown away, and it complicates the straightforward nature of the ownership argument.

This is certainly very unfortunate and for anyone who has ever experienced a loss due to a Bitcoin error or other cryptocurrency, it is certainly very unfortunate when compared to the current situation, and I am sure seeing the vast difference between then and now makes us fantasize or try things that will most likely never come back.

And I think almost all the large areas of land that are used as landfills are owned by the government, because no one wants their land to be used as a landfill. So the government has the right to take back the waste that is taken by other people, no matter how small it is, especially if the waste is valuable or has a high price.