A lawsuit was filed in New York on May 1, 2026, by Noah Doe, who is trying to legally claim ownership of 39,069 Bitcoin wallet addresses that have been inactive for a long time. The complaint points to Section 7-b of New York's personal property law, arguing that these wallets are considered 'abandoned' since the original owners couldn’t access their funds due to security issues. Doe found these wallets back in October 2024 and created an algorithm to spot wallets that fit the abandonment criteria. After notifying the NYPD, he spent a whole year trying to track down the original owners. Now, the lawsuit is asking the court to recognize Doe and his two companies, ABC Corp and XYZ Corp, as the rightful owners of these wallets and their contents. On December 1, 2025, Doe transferred ownership of all but 18 of the wallets to ABC Corp, which then gave 17.7% of the rights to XYZ Corp. The founder of a blockchain analytics platform, Timechain Index, estimates that the total Bitcoin held in these wallets is around 3.7 million, which is valued at roughly $285 billion at today’s prices.
We were in a big need of some Bitcoin drama entertainment. Now Noah Doe only needs to file a lawsuit against Wright or the other way around. The Great Battle of Satoshis!
The Wright era was a lot of fun AND had the great advantage of some of the most toxic part of our community moving to his Shit Coin too. Good times.
As I posted in the now locked dupe of this topic, from the legal filing:
Um, the property is NOT LOCATED in New York. It is data stored on the internet and is not in ANY particular physical location. The addresses are stored in the myriad of independently owned & operated BTC nodes around the world.
With abandoned bank accounts, stock & bonds, etc. they are held by businesses which in turn ARE located in or registered to a physical location. Claims against them can be filed in the jurisdictions where they are located. That is obviously not the case with BTC.
______________________________________________Even if the filing somehow is accepted for trial and the person wins, then what? Without the private keys Noah can't access the coins. Does he plan on just holding them until a big enough QC is built that could break them? Perhaps track down and sue any rightful owner that someday moves the coins to a new wallet? Sue the BTC devs to force a code hack to let him get the coins?
The CW trials have already established that claiming ownership of the coins REQUIRES having the private key(s) which Noah does not have and can not ever get.....
Another rage-baiting Faketoshi who thinks this is going to give him the publicity his ego so desperately demands...
I wonder if there is a way to use this against him? Teach him a lesson? So tired of seeing these egomaniacs defiling Bitcoin's name for their own selfish sakes and not only that, doing so in the most disgusting way.
This is why I am against POS, Knots or any other obvious traps to destroy Bitcoin and centralize the blockchain. Not your keys, not your coins. End of discussion.
Unless there is a court order, it is a mistake to respond to OP_RETURN messages you receive from an unknown person; I would choose to ignore them.
I completely agree; such methods might work for traditional things, but it is a mistake to generalize them to Bitcoin.
Recently I read on the social media where a dormant wallet for about 16 years resurrected and moved the fund to exchange. 16 years is way lengthy than 5yrs. I know of people who are hodling for more than 5 years.
Besides, have we forgotten the advise of Satoshi to treat lost coins as donations to the network?
The law in UK seem a bit non universal. I know some abandoned houses in my country, should I go claiming them if their owners are unavailable?
Who knows if he has started his own quantum rush. He could be developing a powerful quantum computer.
I wonder how much time this idiot spent tracking down 39,069 Bitcoin wallet addresses and messaging their owners through a public campaign and blockchain messages using OP_RETURN??!!!
Either this man is crazy or he has too much free time to spend on this work from which he will most likely gain nothing. The other thing is that the lack of response from wallet owners to his correspondence does not mean that this wallet is actually abandoned or has no owners, but it may mean that they want to maintain their privacy or that they simply did not see the messages demanding proof of ownership.
Before claiming ownership of any BTC address, make sure it's not a criminal address.
Craig Wright claimed in his lawsuit that this address belongs to him.
1FeexV6bAHb8ybZjqQMjJrcCrHGW9sb6uF
And stolen bitcoins from the Mt. Gox exchange were transferred to this address. The bitcoins are still there.
I don't understand why the victims of the Mt. Gox hack haven't filed a lawsuit against Craig Wright
Perhaps he is competing against QC developments, he must win legal rights to those addresses before this technology can actually move bitcoins within them technically without any justified ownership status at the outset.
Am I the only one who sees this event as a "triumph of idiocy"?
Simply put, this smart guy found the addresses of the holders and decided that he could claim ownership (just because he wanted to).
Why did he go straight to Satoshi with this USB flash drive (for his blessing to be called the owner of these 42,000 addresses)?
In the same way, he could go to any bank and claim rights to deposits that have not been used for a long time (but there is a nuance that in this case, ownership rights are transferred to the bank).
Why is he being petty and not claiming his right to Satoshis wallet?
Whoever claims the right to bitcoin, the true owner is the one who has access (not your keys...).
New idiot. This will be more correct.
I don't know the true purpose of these actions. As long as the bitcoins are stored in non-custodial wallets, this idiot won't get anything.
But if he wins the lawsuit and the coins suddenly end up in custodial wallets, then he can file claims against the custodial service and have a good chance of getting the coins back.
Anonymous person tries to be Craig Wright 2.0.
I still remember when a guy with 100 of the wallets CSW claimed were his signed a message saying that he was a liar and a fraud.
Now CSW is on the run, nowhere to be seen with a jail sentence hanging over his head.
A lesson in not poking the bear.
Some people get creative in their means of wealth extraction, I mean theft. Seems to be a bridge to nowhere, except in the cases of CEX's. It could get interested here because they actually do have the keys, and if it's determined the CEX would have to comply with said abandonment order then it appears transfer could occur. So shitty if so.
Who knows if you have guessed well the purpose of his actions. There is no better reason than this and pre-quantum preparation. The main issue is that the real owners of the coins might not be aware of his lawsuit, if they, whenever they want to move it, they'll go through the DEXes.
Noah appear to be wiser than Craig, he didn't go for the bitcoin of Satoshi, rather he went for mini-satoshis that will not make so much waves and he is probably not going to be arrested. The worse scenario is that he loss the case.
Ten years ago, exchanges didn't have KYC procedures, and anyone could send large sums of money to an exchange. Now, any transaction over $100,000 will be verified by the exchange, so I don't think crypto millionaires are foolish enough to fall into such a trap and send coins to an exchange without the necessary checks.
The term you want to check for this case is Legal Situs. There is the general rule of thumb "possession is 90% of the law" but of course a 90% answer is not considered an answer in law at all. The fact that the company is headquartered in New York is likely to be the most relevant fact in terms of location of the Bitcoins. Any external location would generally have to be established by a contract that pre-dates the lawsuit date.
It could sounds even logic... these are abandoned. That could be similarly to find an armored car without the key.
Claim? Please take possession. It would be interesting to see the endpoint.
Of course can't move, can't be used.... in some area... you had to pay taxes on it (likewise in some country they charge a fix amount for "just the possession"). Also as pointed imagine these are linked to criminal activity...
Maybe this is just a way for getting some "personal" marketing? they are advertising the next product?