A New York lawsuit filed by Noah Doe seeks legal ownership of 39,069 dormant Bitcoin wallet addresses.
Summary
- Plaintiff Noah Doe filed suit in New York on May 1, 2026, seeking a declaratory judgment that 39,069 abandoned Bitcoin wallets belong to him under New York lost-property law.
- The filing was made through Brooklyn firm Lewis and Lin LLC under New York Personal Property Law Article 7-B, the lost-property statute covering found and abandoned property.
- The 39,069 listed wallets reportedly hold an estimated 3.7 million BTC worth approximately $285 billion, including addresses linked to Satoshi Nakamoto and the Mt. Gox hacker.
A New York Bitcoin wallet lawsuit filed on May 1, 2026 in the Supreme Court of the State of New York asks a court to declare that 39,069 dormant addresses legally belong to plaintiff Noah Doe.
The complaint, filed under index number 153119/2026 through Brooklyn law firm Lewis and Lin LLC, invokes New York Personal Property Law Article 7-B.
Doe says he discovered the wallets in October 2024 after identifying a security vulnerability that caused owners to permanently lose the ability to withdraw their holdings.
He developed a proprietary algorithm to identify wallets meeting the legal standard for abandonment, reported them to the NYPD, and spent more than a year attempting to locate their owners before filing suit.
What the Bitcoin wallet lawsuit is actually claiming
The complaint seeks a declaratory judgment declaring that Noah Doe and his two assignee companies, designated ABC Company and XYZ Company, are the legal owners of the 39,069 wallets and their contents.
Doe transferred ownership rights in all but 18 wallets to ABC Company on December 1, 2025, which subsequently transferred 17.7% to XYZ Company.
The listed addresses include wallet “12c6D,” associated with Satoshi Nakamoto, and “1Feex,” linked to the Mt. Gox exchange hacker. Sani, founder of blockchain analytics platform Timechain Index, estimated the total holdings across the listed wallets at approximately 3.7 million BTC, valued at around $285 billion at current prices. Crypto.news has tracked broader legislative efforts to establish legal frameworks around federal Bitcoin holdings.
Why the case could set a precedent for abandoned crypto property
The central legal question is whether dormant, self-custodied Bitcoin wallets can be treated as abandoned property under existing state law. Exchange-held assets already have dormancy and escheatment frameworks, but self-custodied wallets outside any institutional ledger sit in a legal grey zone that no court has formally resolved.
Timechain Index’s founder noted a potential procedural flaw: the plaintiffs sent legal notices to Pay-to-Public-Key-Hash addresses, while many old Satoshi-era wallet balances sit in unnotified Pay-to-Public-Key format scripts. If a court accepts the claim, it could establish precedent for how abandoned-property rules apply to decentralised assets entirely outside exchange custody.
Crypto.news has reported on the US government’s own Bitcoin holdings, as the legal and regulatory framework around Bitcoin ownership continues to evolve. The Bitcoin (BTC) price page tracks live market reaction as the lawsuit draws attention to dormant wallet dynamics.
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