Satoshi-era bitcoin lawsuit narrows after wallets move

Plaintiffs narrowed a New York County Supreme Court lawsuit on July 7, voluntarily discontinuing claims against 44 defendants after those wallet addresses moved funds following the suit’s filing. The litigation still lists 39,025 Bitcoin addresses, including wallets tied to Bitcoin’s earliest mining era and addresses linked to Satoshi Nakamoto.

The complaint, filed by entities named ABC Company, XYZ Company and a pseudonymous plaintiff called Noah Doe, asks the court to declare the plaintiffs the legal owners of thousands of inactive addresses. The plaintiffs say they located the addresses, reported them to police and left public notice for owners before filing the suit.

Galaxy Digital research head Alex Thorn posted calculations showing the 44 removed addresses held about 21,443 BTC when the complaint was filed, moved roughly 46,334 BTC on-chain after the filing and now hold about 3,097 BTC. At recent Bitcoin prices, the post-filing transactions were worth about $2.9 billion. One entry listed as John Doe 106 held roughly 2,100 BTC at the suit’s outset and transacted more than 20,000 BTC across multiple transfers between March and July while still retaining nearly 2,000 BTC.

The plaintiffs’ amended complaint frames the claim under a lost-property theory. It treats addresses that showed no on-chain activity after notice as abandoned and asks the court to transfer ownership. The document acknowledges that access to the coins requires private keys, and it seeks a judicial declaration based on prolonged inactivity and unsuccessful efforts to contact owners.

A defendant identifying himself as John Doe 33 filed a verified answer and affirmative defenses on July 8. He appears as an individual rather than as an address or ledger entry and said his portfolio exceeded $80 billion when the case was filed. He argued that public Bitcoin addresses are not legal persons and cannot be sued and that copying public blockchain data to USB drives and providing it to police does not equal possession of private keys.

John Doe 33 challenged the plaintiffs’ notice method, which relied in part on OP_RETURN messages embedded in transactions. He asserted that OP_RETURN payloads do not reliably notify owners because many wallet interfaces do not display that data and holders in cold storage would have little reason to monitor such messages. His filing also alleges that plaintiffs’ counsel represented reasonable efforts to locate owners even though an identified owner had contacted counsel by telephone.

Outside parties have filed proposed amicus briefs. One asks the court to consider whether New York’s lost-property law applies to public blockchain addresses and whether inactivity can stand in for intent to abandon. A blockchain trade association argued that declaring inactivity to be abandonment could cloud ownership of self-custodied digital assets and noted that a court declaration would not let plaintiffs access coins without the private keys.

The judge will weigh whether silence on a public ledger can be treated as abandonment, whether legal title can be transferred for assets controlled by cryptographic keys, and whether a declaratory judgment would have practical effect when control depends on private keys.