Plaintiffs seek to claim dormant wallets tied to Satoshi Nakamoto under abandoned-property statute
A New York court is being asked to declare some of Bitcoin’s oldest dormant wallets, including addresses tied to the cryptocurrency’s creator, as lost property valued at less than $10 each, according to a lawsuit filed by pseudonymous plaintiff Noah Doe and two Wyoming entities, ABC Company and XYZ Company.
The case names 39,069 Bitcoin addresses as defendants. Those addresses hold approximately 3.8 million BTC, roughly 18% of Bitcoin’s 21 million total supply. At current market prices, Galaxy Digital estimates the holdings are worth $293.5 billion, with an average address value of $7.5 million and a median of $3.86 million.
Plaintiffs value each address at under $10, citing unavailable private keys. The strategy leverages New York’s Personal Property Law Article 7-B, which allows finders of lost property to claim title after a required holding period if no owner appears. New York law provides an expedited path for property worth less than $10 when reasonable efforts to locate the owner have failed.
The defendant set includes 21,923 addresses matching the Patoshi pattern, early-mined wallets long associated with Satoshi Nakamoto. These addresses hold 1.096 million Bitcoin. The lawsuit also names a wallet holding 79,957 BTC linked to the 2011 Mt. Gox breach, as well as a burn address holding 2,131 BTC designed so no owner could move funds.
Plaintiffs conducted an on-chain notice campaign using OP_RETURN messages, a press release, and a claim window after placing address lists on USB drives at New York Police Department’s 17th Precinct. Salomon Brothers, an entity serving as representative, issued legal notices via OP_RETURN in 2025 with a 90-day response window. Hundreds of addresses moved coins after the campaign and were excluded from the lawsuit; silent addresses became the defendant set.
Justice Kathy J. King is hearing the case. Plaintiff obtained permission to proceed under pseudonym, citing threat of physical violence or kidnapping.
A favorable judgment would not immediately move coins but would serve as “cloud on title,” usable to freeze accounts if owners move Bitcoin to regulated exchanges or custodians.
The case presents multiple technical and legal conflicts. Satoshi-linked wallets have been extensively studied and monitored by researchers and analysts, contradicting the plaintiffs’ obscurity assumption. The Mt. Gox-linked wallet is widely recognized as stolen or contested property rather than abandoned. The burn address cannot be spent from by design, creating a technical impossibility for an abandonment claim.
Many defendant addresses last moved coins between 2009 and 2013. The dormancy spans over a decade, forming the basis of the abandonment argument under New York law.
