The pseudonymous defendant John Doe 33 filed a motion in the New York State Supreme Court to dismiss claims in a case over 39,069 dormant Bitcoin addresses. The suit was filed on March 11 on behalf of Noah Doe and two Wyoming-registered companies — ABC Company and XYZ Company.
The plaintiffs consider the coins linked to the addresses to be abandoned property and seek rights to them. According to court filings, the case involves about 3.799 million BTC. Timechain Index founder known as Sani cites 3.7 million BTC (about $231 billion at the time of writing).
🚨🚨🚨A New York suit by “Noah Doe” and two Wyoming LLCs seeks a court order confirming their ownership of 39,069 long‑dormant Bitcoin wallets, arguing the wallets are legally “abandoned” property they found, reported to NYPD, noticed on‑chain and in the press, and then claimed… pic.twitter.com/34gH1Jqxxx
— Sani | TimechainIndex.com (@SaniExp) May 24, 2026
The list includes addresses that public sources link to Satoshi Nakamoto, as well as the 1Feex address associated with the Mt. Gox hack. The identity of whoever controls the 1Feex private key is unknown.
The case
The plaintiffs base their position on Article 7-B of New York’s Personal Property Law. They argue inactive wallets can be treated as property whose owners did not respond after notice. The defense contends Bitcoin addresses are not persons or legal entities that can be named as defendants.
John Doe 33 says the plaintiffs effectively gave police their own USB drives onto which they had copied public blockchain data. In his view, that does not establish grounds to treat the addresses as found property. He also noted the pseudonym does not indicate any connection to the 33rd address on the plaintiffs’ list and is used for security, privacy, and to mitigate the risk of physical targeting of large crypto-asset holders.
Galaxy head of research Alex Thorn said John Doe 33 is linked to a 5,000 BTC wallet: the coins arrived there in April 2014 and have not moved for more than 12 years. He estimated that at current prices the balance is worth about $300 million.
a real defendant has surfaced in the noah doe case, the ny suit trying to claim ownership of ~3.8m dormant btc including satoshis coins. “john doe 33,” pro se, filed the opening salvo of a motion to dismiss. and he’s not asking to be removed.. he’s arguing the entire case is void https://t.co/8YmEMz1l9z
— Alex Thorn (@intangiblecoins) July 2, 2026
“The emergence of an owner who contests the suit and has standing to participate completely changes the posture of the case. He points to exactly the jurisdictional and statutory defects that are hardest for the plaintiffs to get around,” Thorn wrote.
Until now, the case proceeded against a list of addresses whose owners had not appeared in court. If no one objected, the plaintiffs could have sought a judgment without a fully adversarial position from the other side.
Inactivity does not equal abandonment
According to Bitbo, about 3.5 million BTC have not moved for more than 10 years. Another 6.6 million BTC have been inactive for more than five years.
Such coins may be lost, or investors may keep private keys in cold storage and deliberately avoid transacting. In the event of an owner’s death, access may also depend on inheritance and key transfer.
In late May, Bitcoin attorney Ian Cohen filed an amicus curiae brief and urged the court to dismiss the suit. He argued that found-property law applies to physical objects, not to the results of scanning a public blockchain.
“Mere inactivity, no matter how long, is not abandonment,” Cohen said.
The attorney also noted that New York’s abandoned property law, amended in 2022 for virtual currencies, provides for such assets to be delivered to the state comptroller, not to private individuals or companies.
In August 2025, it emerged that the “revived investment bank Salomon Brothers” intended to gain access to Bitcoin addresses it considers abandoned. The company used an OP_RETURN script — a standard mechanism that allows arbitrary data to be embedded in transactions.
The stated goal of the initiative was to protect funds from criminals and “rogue states,” and its legal basis was the “doctrine of abandonment.” ForkLog examined who is behind the Salomon Brothers brand and what such a precedent could mean for the industry.
