An anonymous plaintiff who identified himself as Noah Doe filed a lawsuit in the New York Supreme Court, claiming legal ownership of 3.79 million BTC distributed across 39,069 dormant wallets, with an estimated value of between $285 billion and $293 billion at current prices. The list includes addresses associated with Satoshi Nakamoto, early network miners, and the wallet that received the 80,000 BTC stolen in the 2011 Mt. Gox hack
His legal strategy relies on the New York Personal Property Law of 1958, a statute designed for abandoned physical goods such as jewelry or clothing. Between December 2024 and April 2025, Doe submitted three USB drives containing the addresses to NYPD Precinct 17, following the formal procedure for found objects. He then sent transactions to each address embedding legal notices through the OP_RETURN field, setting a deadline of October 10, 2025, for holders to prove ownership. No one responded.
The central problem is that Doe holds no private keys. Without them, no court can move a single BTC: the Bitcoin protocol does not recognize court orders. On-chain analysts also noted that the notices were sent to modern P2PKH address formats, while the oldest BTC wallets with the largest balances operate in P2PK format, meaning a large portion of the notifications never reached the addresses where the claimed value actually resides.
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