$293B Satoshi-era Bitcoin suit narrows after wallet moves

Plaintiffs in a New York County Supreme Court suit seeking ownership of long-dormant Bitcoin addresses removed 44 defendants after those addresses moved funds, trimming the list of targeted wallets to 39,025. The dispute involves coins tied to Bitcoin’s earliest mining era and has been described as relating to roughly $293 billion in value.

The amended complaint originally listed 39,069 addresses that the plaintiffs said were found, reported to police and left unclaimed after a notice campaign. A voluntary discontinuance filed July 7 eliminated 44 of those entries. Blockchain researchers tracking the case report that each removed address recorded on-chain transactions after the lawsuit was filed.

Analysis by Alex Thorn, head of research at Galaxy Digital, shows the removed addresses held about 21,443 BTC when the case began, later moved roughly 46,334 BTC on-chain and now retain about 3,097 BTC. At recent prices, the post-filing movement was worth roughly $2.9 billion. The largest removed address, listed in court as John Doe 106, transferred more than 20,000 BTC in multiple transactions between March and July while at times still holding nearly 2,000 BTC.

The plaintiffs’ legal theory excludes wallets that took “on-chain” action and treats the remaining addresses as abandoned because they showed no activity. The post-filing transactions narrow the legal question before the court to whether a wallet can be declared abandoned based on inactivity up until the instant its owner signs a transaction.

A pseudonymous defendant identified as John Doe 33 filed a verified answer and affirmative defenses on July 8. The filing challenges the plaintiffs’ standing and notice process and states the defendant is appearing as a natural person, not as an address or ledger coordinate. The filing asserts that public Bitcoin addresses are not legal persons, that copying public blockchain data onto devices and delivering it to police does not equal possession of private keys, and that OP_RETURN messages used in the plaintiffs’ notice campaign do not reliably reach many address holders, including cold-storage users. The answer also alleges an identified owner contacted the plaintiffs’ lawyers by telephone.

Outside parties filed proposed amicus briefs. One brief asks whether New York’s lost-property framework applies to public blockchain addresses and whether inactivity can stand for an owner’s intent to abandon property. A trade association representing blockchain firms argues that treating silence as abandonment would create legal uncertainty for holders of self-custodied digital assets and notes the plaintiffs never possessed the wallets and cannot move coins without private keys. The plaintiffs’ amended complaint acknowledges private keys are required to withdraw cryptocurrency.

Even if a court declared the plaintiffs the legal owners of particular addresses, control of coins would remain with whoever holds the private keys. The case covers wallets from Bitcoin’s earliest years, some of which researchers have linked to Satoshi Nakamoto, and the court will consider how traditional property law applies to assets controlled by cryptographic signatures rather than physical possession.