James Howells, who accidentally threw away a hard drive with 8,000 Bitcoin, has given his advice for industry newcomers, veterans, and skeptics in 2026.
Newcomers are diving into crypto without learning what it is, veterans are watching their profits soar without spurring adoption and skeptics are judging crypto with little information, says OG Bitcoiner James Howells.
Howells is famous for fighting in court to recover a hard drive from a landfill that contained 8,000 Bitcoin (BTC) worth $700 million. While he didn’t succeed, he told Cointelegraph that he didn’t let the loss define him and shared his tips and 2026 resolutions for newcomers, veterans and skeptics.
Many beginners launch straight into buying crypto on an exchange, but they should first learn what it is they’re buying and the real-world problems it looks to solve, Howells said.
“Learn how blockchains operate, why decentralized finance exists, and what problem it solves.”
“Fiat systems concentrate power in governments and intermediaries,” he said, adding blockchain offers an alternative for individuals to “opt out of that without permission from a third party.”
“Understanding why this matters is more important than buying any coin,” said Howells.
Once the basics are understood, Howells said newcomers should experiment with all kinds of crypto protocols, services, and wallets — without putting real money at risk.
“You will make mistakes, and you will lose money. That is part of learning,” he said. “The key is to ensure those lessons cost pennies, not pay cheques.”
“Nobody cares about losing $0.10 if they learned something valuable. People do care when they lose $20, $30, or more on a bad app and then blame the entire technology.”
Howells’ advice for newcomers to experiment with everything had one exception: Leverage trading.
“Stay away from it entirely,” he said, warning that leverage platforms benefit from inexperienced traders making mistakes who “become liquidity for more sophisticated players.”
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Those who don’t understand market structure, liquidation mechanics, and risk management become the product, Howells warned.
Howells told crypto veterans to routinely test their crypto wallet backup seed phrases to ensure that they can still restore access to their funds.
“Test them. You do not want the first time you need a backup to be the moment you discover it is unreadable, incompatible, outdated, or incomplete,” said Howells, who added he’d seen countless wallets made in 2013 to 2015 rendered inaccessible by software rot and obsolete formats.
“Hardware changes, software evolves, and best practice evolves. If your entire setup depends on one device, one seed copy, or one location, it is not robust.”
Howells wants to see more veterans teach newcomers, focusing less on technical analysis and more on setting up wallets and making transactions in the real world.
“If you have made significant gains, reinvest in the ecosystem,” he added. “Launch a business, build a service, run infrastructure, or accept crypto for existing goods and services.”
Howells said crypto adoption should be “far further along than it is,” and that veterans share responsibility for that.
Howells said Wall Street and politicians embrace crypto only when it suits their own interests and that “none of them are acting in your interests.”
“Their focus is control, influence, and risk management on their own terms.”
Howells said the “gravy train” that we see today may not last forever and that many of the pro-crypto regulations in place today are the “very cages that will trap users later.”
“They are not on your side,” he said, warning veterans not to anchor their convictions around institutional and regulatory milestones and instead focus on advancing peer-to-peer crypto adoption.
Howells told skeptics to give crypto a go before criticizing it based on misinformed headlines.
“Use it genuinely over a meaningful period of time. Set up a wallet, make transactions, experience custody, and understand what it enables.”
He said that most criticism targets scams and bad actors, which shouldn’t be ignored, but neither should the underlying ability to hold and transfer value without permission.
“Judge the system by what it can do, not by how badly some people use it.”
Finally, Howells noted that much of the recycled criticism comes from financial institutions and nation-states that are quietly building blockchain infrastructure for custody, trading, and settlement behind the scenes.
“That contradiction is worth noticing,” Howells concluded.
