Computer expert who accidentally threw out Bitcoin fortune on an old hard drive says it is now worth £1.5BILLION as he launches legal fight to dig it out of council landfill

A computer expert who accidentally threw out his Bitcoin fortune has seen its value rocket to be up to £1.5billion - and has launched a legal fight to get it back.

Early crypto investor James Howells, 38, made the calamitous mistake ten years ago when a misunderstanding saw his partner throw out as rubbish a black bin bag in which he was temporarily storing the hard drive containing the only access to his crypto assets.

Distraught James has been trying to recover the disc from the council run dump ever since - and has now taken legal action to get access to search the dump.

But cruelly James has now watched the value of his lost 8,000 coins go up almost 40 per cent in the past month alone - meaning they are now worth more than £450million.

He told MailOnline last night: 'Some experts believe that by the end of the year the price will rise to $25,000 per coin. That would make my hard drive worth £1.5billion. The council may be happy to leave that in a landfill but I'm not.

'They want me to go away and forget about it but how could anyone? Why should I back down? All I want is a chance to get my property back.'