John Doe 33 Appears in $200B Satoshi Bitcoin Lawsuit

On June 30 a pseudonymous respondent filing as John Doe 33 entered a case in New York Supreme Court to contest a lawsuit that seeks legal title to roughly 3.799 million Bitcoin tied to 39,069 inactive addresses, including addresses attributed to Satoshi Nakamoto and other early miners.

The complaint was filed by two corporate plaintiffs listed as ABC Company and XYZ Company and by a pseudonymous plaintiff using the name Noah Doe. The suit invokes New York abandoned-property law and lists the claim at $10 for jurisdictional purposes while the targeted coins are worth more than $200 billion at current market prices.

John Doe 33’s notice of appearance states he is “a natural person and a real human being” and not “a Bitcoin blockchain address string, a digital wallet, a line of source code, or any other form of inanimate data.” The filing asks the court for permission to proceed under a pseudonym to protect the respondent’s identity and safety and reserves all defenses and objections. The notice is accompanied by a motion to dismiss.

The filing distinguishes the named John Does in the complaint as labels the plaintiffs use for ledger entries and says the respondent’s pseudonym does not match the 33rd address in the plaintiffs’ exhibit.

Before the respondent appeared, about 52 addresses named in the complaint moved roughly 34,335 BTC, worth more than $2 billion at current prices. The complaint lists many long-dormant addresses; the filing notes wallets can remain inactive for reasons such as cold storage, long-term custody, lost keys or a deliberate decision not to transact.

An amicus brief filed by attorney Ian Cohen argued that Article 7-B of the New York Personal Property Law applies to physical objects found by people and does not apply to scans of a public ledger. The brief states, “Dormancy on a public blockchain is not abandonment,” and calls the plaintiffs’ theory flawed on textual, structural, constitutional and practical grounds.

Alex Thorn, head of research at Galaxy Digital, wrote that a real person has filed a notice of appearance to oppose the Noah Doe claim and emphasized that the respondent is opposing the suit directly rather than appearing only as an amicus.

The court must rule on two procedural questions: whether the respondent may defend under a pseudonym and whether the motion to dismiss should halt the plaintiffs’ claims. Those rulings will determine the next steps in the litigation and whether claims to legal title over the named wallets proceed.