002
TECH
Knight Capital: the deployment that cost more than $460 million
A trading system turned 212 customer orders into millions of unwanted orders. The missing safeguard mattered as much as the faulty code.
READ THE CASE STUDY →001
THE DECISION
He knew Bitcoin early.
He kept the wrong thing.
James Howells mined Bitcoin when it was still an obscure experiment. Years later, during an office clear-out, a hard drive holding the private key to his stash ended up in the trash. There was no password reset. No bank to call. The key was the money.
Contemporary reporting in 2013 put the lost stash at roughly 7,500 BTC; later accounts described about 8,000. What never changed was the brutal mechanism of the loss: without the private key stored on that drive, the coins could not be spent.
Howells spent years trying to get permission from Newport City Council to excavate the Docksway landfill. His plans grew increasingly elaborate, at one point involving AI-assisted sorting and robot dogs. The council repeatedly cited environmental and permitting concerns.
In January 2025, a High Court judge struck out his claim to force a search, finding no realistic prospect of success. When plans emerged to close the landfill, Howells even explored buying the site.
THE LESSON ISN'T “DON'T THROW AWAY A HARD DRIVE.”
IT'S THAT IRREPLACEABLE THINGS NEED REDUNDANCY BEFORE THEY BECOME IRREPLACEABLE.