Bitcoin Magazine
Anonymous Plaintiff Seeks Legal Title to $293 Billion in Dormant Bitcoin, Without Holding Any Private Keys
A pseudonymous individual calling himself “Noah Doe,” along with two Wyoming LLCs, has filed suit in New York Supreme Court seeking a court declaration that they are the legal owners of 39,069 dormant Bitcoin addresses holding roughly 3.8 million BTC — worth an estimated $293 billion at current prices.
The case, filed March 11, 2026, and amended May 1, 2026 (Index No. 153119/2026), is believed to be the first attempt in U.S. history to claim title to Bitcoin under a lost-and-found property statute.
The legal vehicle is New York Personal Property Law Article 7-B, a statute designed for tangible lost objects — a wallet found on a sidewalk, say, or jewelry left in a cab. The law says a finder who reports lost property to police, makes reasonable efforts to locate the owner, and receives no response within a set period can eventually take legal title to the item.
Noah Doe’s complaint argues that dormant Bitcoin addresses are “lost property” under that framework, that his USB drives of address data delivered to the NYPD 17th Precinct satisfy the deposit requirement, and that title to all 39,069 addresses vested in him across three dates: December 26, 2025, March 31, 2026, and April 14, 2026.
The statute has never been applied to cryptocurrency. Article 7-B was written for physical objects that a finder picks up and hands to authorities. The plaintiff never held private keys to any of these addresses and could not have transferred the coins to the police or to any owner who came forward.
A Bitcoin address, unlike a lost wallet, remains fully accessible to its original owner regardless of whether someone else has identified it — the coins do not move unless the true keyholder signs a transaction.
What the bitcoin lawsuit targets
The 39,069 addresses named as defendants are not a random sample of dormant Bitcoin.
According to blockchain research firm Galaxy Digital, which published a detailed analysis of the case in May 2026, roughly 21,923 of the defendant addresses carry what researchers call the “Patoshi” nonce pattern — an onchain fingerprint widely attributed to Bitcoin’s pseudonymous creator, Satoshi Nakamoto. Those addresses alone hold approximately 1.096 million BTC, worth around $84.7 billion.
Also on the defendant list: one address holding 79,957 BTC stolen in the 2011 Mt. Gox hack — coins that have been actively tracked by investigators for over a decade — and one address that is a Counterparty “burn” address, meaning it is provably unspendable and was never controlled by any person. The Mt. Gox coins are the subject of ongoing recovery proceedings and are not, by any conventional definition, abandoned.
The median defendant address holds 50 BTC, currently worth approximately $3.86 million. The average holds 97.25 BTC, worth around $7.5 million.
A