I've always taken this story with a pinch of salt. The timeline is that the guy "had some bitcoin", then lost interest, then the hard drive was thrown away, and

I've always taken this story with a pinch of salt. The timeline is that the guy "had some bitcoin", then lost interest, then the hard drive was thrown away, and then sometime later saw the price and thought he should go looking for it. Did he actually have as much as he recalled years later? Did he not sell or transfer it for the little it was worth, and forget about that years later? Was the wallet encrypted with a password he won't remember? Did the hard drive get destroyed in the process of being thrown out? Did the data get wiped? Did it even go to this landfill? There are a great many ways in which this could result with zero bitcoin, even if they find the drive. I'm not surprised the council disallowed it. A 1% chance of £100m is only worth £1m, and it would be a costly endeavour to support.