In a last-ditch effort, the Wales-based software engineer filed a lawsuit against Newport City Council for roughly 495.31 million British pounds, or about $647 million, in damages for repeatedly denying his request to excavate the landfill site housing the discarded hard drive, which contains around 8,000 units of Bitcoin. Howells explained that the lawsuit is a strategy to convince the council to allow an excavation of its landfill, not a reflection of the actual situation. Howells has assembled a team of specialists to carry out the excavation at no cost to the council. He has also proposed to give the council 10% of the recovered coins’ value. The case is set for a hearing in December. Newport Council, however, has dismissed the lawsuit as “weak” and expressed concerns over potential environmental impacts of the proposed excavation.