NY lawsuit seeks ownership of 39,069 dormant Bitcoin wallets

On May 1, plaintiffs Noah Doe and the Wyoming LLCs ABC Company and XYZ Company filed a 901-page complaint in New York seeking a court order declaring ownership of 39,069 dormant Bitcoin addresses under New York lost-property law. The filing asks the court to declare the coins abandoned and to award them to the plaintiffs.

The complaint lists specific wallet identifiers, including the short label ’12c6D’ attributed to Satoshi Nakamoto and ‘1Feex,’ an address associated with the Mt. Gox hacker. The plaintiffs say they located the assets, reported them to the New York Police Department and then pursued recovery under state lost-property rules. The filing alleges the named addresses together hold a large quantity of Bitcoin; the founder of on-chain analytics firm Timechain Index estimated roughly 3.7 million BTC tied to the listed wallets, a total valued at about $285 billion at recent prices.

The plaintiffs base their claim on New York lost-property statutes, asserting that unclaimed digital assets can be treated like abandoned bank accounts and transferred through court process. The complaint asks the court for an order declaring the listed coins abandoned and vesting title in the plaintiffs.

Legal and technical hurdles are set out in the filing and in commentary from analysts. Bitcoin balances are controlled by private cryptographic keys. Noveleader, lead research analyst at Castle Labs, noted the Bitcoin protocol ‘has no mechanism to reassign funds without a private key’ and described one limited path to enforcement if coins are later deposited with a regulated exchange or custodian, where a court could then direct the intermediary to act.

The complaint also raises notice issues. Many early Bitcoin outputs created by Satoshi-era miners use a Pay-to-Public-Key (P2PK) format that stores the public key itself. The plaintiffs reportedly sent legal notices to corresponding Pay-to-Public-Key-Hash (P2PKH) addresses, a hashed address format that often holds no balance for those older scripts. The founder of Timechain Index observed most Satoshi-era coins sit in P2PK outputs, which means notices sent to P2PKH addresses may have reached empty scripts. Noveleader called the notice effort ‘structurally defective’ for targeting address formats that do not correspond to the older outputs.

The complaint names wallets that have not transacted on-chain for years. Analysts compiling network data estimate roughly 3.5 million BTC have been inactive for at least 10 years and about 6.6 million BTC have not moved for more than five years. Those totals include coins tied to deceased owners, lost private keys and long-term holders who have not moved funds.

Even if a court issues a judgment awarding ownership, the protocol-level reality remains that only the holder of a private key can move coins. The complaint acknowledges that a judgment would be enforceable only if any of the named coins are later transferred to a regulated intermediary or custodian that can be compelled by the court to freeze or turn over assets.

The filing frames legal questions for the court about how lost-property doctrines apply to blockchain ledger entries, how notice should be given to holders identified only by address formats, and how courts can translate traditional possession concepts to assets controlled by cryptographic keys.