34,335 BTC transfers undermine ‘lost’ wallet claim
On-chain records show 34,335 BTC moved from 52 addresses named in a New York suit over 39,069 ‘lost’ wallets.
Two anonymous Wyoming LLCs, filing under the name ‘Noah Doe’, sued in New York to claim 39,069 inactive Bitcoin addresses as lost property. The complaint sought a default judgment to gain title to roughly 3.799 million BTC and listed the total claim at $10 to meet procedural rules. The targeted addresses include coins mined in Bitcoin’s earliest years and linked by researchers to Satoshi Nakamoto.
Blockchain data shows 52 of the listed addresses moved about 34,335 BTC, worth about $2.48 billion at current prices. Analysis by market researchers found that 29 addresses moved 12,302 BTC after they were officially served in the lawsuit.
Attorney Ian Cohen filed an amicus brief in late May arguing New York’s lost-property law does not apply to self-custodied digital assets and that the state lacks control over private cryptographic keys. Cohen wrote that possession of a private key is the clearest indicator of ownership and that a dormant address can represent long-term cold storage rather than abandonment.
On June 4, New York Supreme Court Justice Kathy King granted a hearing and issued a stay of the proceedings, blocking any immediate default judgment. On June 18, plaintiffs’ lawyer David Lin asked the court to lift or narrow the stay; Cohen filed a rebuttal the next day and pointed to the on-chain transfers as material information the plaintiffs should disclose.
Blockchain records show many transfers occurred after the case was filed and, in several instances, after service. Those movements are central to the court’s pending assessment of whether an inactive address can be treated as ownerless under state lost-property statutes.
Alex Thorn, head of research at Galaxy Digital, wrote ‘A default judgment against defendants could grant legal title to 3.799 million BTC, including coins suspected of belonging to Satoshi.’ Thorn added that a ruling granting title would probably lead to years of litigation and competing ownership claims and urged industry stakeholders to follow the proceedings.
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