NY suit seeks title to Satoshi-linked Bitcoin wallets

An amended complaint filed in New York state court asks a judge to award legal title to 39,069 dormant Bitcoin addresses to a pseudonymous plaintiff, identified as Noah Doe, and two Wyoming entities, ABC Company and XYZ Company. The filing treats the addresses as lost property under Article 7-B of New York’s Personal Property Law and asks for a quiet-title declaration after a statutory holding period.

Court papers and blockchain analysis show the addresses contain about 3.8 million BTC, roughly 18% of Bitcoin’s 21 million supply. The complaint says the plaintiffs located the addresses, gave lists to the New York Police Department’s 17th Precinct on USB drives, issued on-chain notices using OP_RETURN messages, published a press release and opened a claim window to try to reach owners before seeking title.

The plaintiffs argue each wallet should be valued at less than $10 because the private keys needed to move the coins are not available. The complaint cites an unnamed expert for that valuation and seeks the shorter legal path New York law provides for property worth under $10 when reasonable efforts to find the owner fail.

Blockchain analysis provided to the court contests that valuation. The analyst estimates the 39,069 addresses hold about $293.5 billion at current prices, with an average of about 97.25 BTC per address and a median of 50 BTC. The median matches Bitcoin’s original 50-BTC mining reward, which indicates many targeted addresses are early mining payouts that have not moved since the network’s first years.

The list of defendant addresses includes approximately 21,923 addresses following the Patoshi pattern, a cluster researchers associate with early-mined coins and with Bitcoin’s pseudonymous creator. Those addresses are estimated to hold about 1.096 million BTC. The complaint also names a wallet linked to the 2011 Mt. Gox breach, estimated to contain 79,957 BTC, and a burn address that holds about 2,131 BTC.

In 2025, an entity identified as Salomon Brothers used OP_RETURN notices on-chain to claim rights under a doctrine of abandonment. Small transfers followed that campaign; addresses that moved coins were removed from the plaintiffs’ list, the complaint says, leaving the silent wallets as defendants.

Legal specialists note that inactivity on the blockchain does not prove abandonment because the ledger records only transfers, not owner intent. Wallets may represent lost keys, cold storage, estate holdings, stolen coins, or addresses designed to be unspendable. A court order cannot produce cryptographic keys or move funds; a quiet-title judgment would be a legal document that could be used to seek freezes at exchanges or custodians if an owner later tries to transact through traditional intermediaries.

Justice Kathy J. King allowed the lead plaintiff to proceed under a pseudonym, citing threats of violence or kidnapping if the claimant’s identity were public. The firm that provided the blockchain analysis warned a technical default judgment could be sought by late June 2026, about 30 days after the on-chain service of process, but added that an uncontested award is unlikely given judicial discretion and the gap between the plaintiffs’ valuation and on-chain estimates.

Alex Thorn, head of research at Galaxy Digital, warned, “It would be extraordinary for a New York court to hand three anonymous parties legal title to roughly $293 billion worth of BTC, including the coins most closely associated with Satoshi Nakamoto, on a lost-and-found theory propped up by a questionable under-$10 valuation.”