A New York lawsuit is in search of a court docket declaration over tens of hundreds of long-dormant Bitcoin addresses that one exterior evaluation says collectively maintain about 3.79 million BTC. The case, introduced by “Noah Doe” and two Wyoming LLCs, makes an attempt to border inactive self-custodied crypto addresses as deserted property underneath New York lost-and-found regulation.
The submitting, submitted within the Supreme Court docket of the State of New York, County of New York, names ABC Firm, XYZ Firm and Noah Doe as plaintiffs, with “John Does 1–39,069” listed as respondents. It’s not a court docket order awarding possession. It’s a summons and amended criticism in search of declaratory aid, which means the plaintiffs are asking the court docket to acknowledge their claimed rights to the wallets and their contents.
Based on the criticism, Doe allegedly recognized three units of dormant digital wallets between December 2024 and April 2025. The primary group included 1,625 wallets, or 1,544 after duplicates had been excluded. The second included 546 wallets. The third and largest group included 39,911 wallets. After exclusions and alleged proprietor responses, the plaintiffs say the case issues 39,069 remaining wallets they describe as deserted.
3.79 Million Bitcoin Caught In Weird NY Authorized Struggle
The criticism says Doe reported the pockets lists to the New York Metropolis Police Division on three separate events utilizing USB drives. The NYPD later returned the drives, in keeping with the submitting. The plaintiffs argue that these steps glad New York lost-property procedures and that title vested in Doe underneath New York Private Property Legislation § 257 earlier than later assignments moved many of the claimed rights into ABC Firm and XYZ Firm.
The dimensions of the declare is what has drawn consideration throughout Bitcoin circles. Sani, the operator of TimechainIndex.com, stated on X that the addresses listed within the case maintain 3,791,121.17697938 BTC and embody addresses attributed to Satoshi Nakamoto, early miners, Casascius Cash, misplaced cash, hackers and unidentified entities. That mixture BTC determine and people attributions don’t seem within the criticism’s physique. The submitting itself lists addresses and lays out the authorized concept, nevertheless it doesn’t state “Satoshi Nakamoto,” “Casascius,” or the three.79 million BTC complete.
🚨🚨🚨A New York go well with by “Noah Doe” and two Wyoming LLCs seeks a court docket order confirming their possession of 39,069 lengthy‑dormant Bitcoin wallets, arguing the wallets are legally “deserted” property they discovered, reported to NYPD, seen on‑chain and within the press, after which claimed… pic.twitter.com/34gH1Jqxxx
— Sani | TimechainIndex.com (@SaniExp) Could 24, 2026
The authorized argument is uncommon as a result of it treats dormant Bitcoin addresses as recoverable property, regardless that the criticism acknowledges that cryptocurrency can’t be withdrawn with out the related non-public key. The submitting compares wallets to financial institution accounts, arguing {that a} digital pockets will be uniquely recognized by blockchain protocol, handle and transaction historical past. However that analogy is probably going to attract scrutiny from Bitcoin-native observers as a result of possession of a checking account and management over a self-custodied Bitcoin UTXO function very otherwise in follow.
The background to the lawsuit seems to hint again to a broad on-chain discover marketing campaign tied to Salomon Brothers Strategic Advisors. The criticism says Doe retained Salomon Brothers in February 2025 as a strategic advisor to assist develop a plan for notifying potential pockets homeowners and figuring out wallets incorrectly included within the allegedly deserted group. It later says a cyber/blockchain knowledgeable despatched messages to pockets holders utilizing OP_RETURN, whereas Salomon Brothers hosted a discover webpage.
Salomon Brothers publicly framed the marketing campaign as an effort to handle dangers round deserted wallets. In an August 2025 press launch, the agency stated deserted wallets might grow to be weak to better-resourced attackers and argued that “securing wallets protects” different pockets holders. The discharge stated notices had been inserted into long-dormant wallets and gave homeowners a minimum of 90 days to reply, both by conducting an on-chain transaction with the non-public key or through the use of a kind on a Salomon Brothers webpage.
That Salomon Brothers connection requires cautious context. Galaxy Analysis described the entity concerned as not the historic Wall Road agency that grew to become a part of Citigroup, however a more recent group that acquired the Salomon title. Salomon Brothers’ present web site describes the agency as an “alliance {of professional} practices” offering companies together with monetary advisory, actual property finance and analysis.
Galaxy’s evaluation of the associated OP_RETURN marketing campaign described it because the “Nice Bitcoin Dusting.” Based on Galaxy, an unknown actor despatched 41,523 OP_RETURN messages from 3,738 sender addresses to 39,423 recipient addresses, which collectively held 2,334,482.52 BTC when the messages had been transmitted. Galaxy stated the marketing campaign had two phases: preliminary trial messages with out Salomon hyperlinks, adopted by waves of messages that included hyperlinks to Salomon’s web site.
Galaxy additionally discovered that 98.82% of the notified addresses had been legacy P2PKH addresses and that the typical adjusted dormancy was about 2,171 days, or roughly 5.95 years. That element issues as a result of Sani individually argued that, for a lot of outdated coin holders, together with wallets attributed to Satoshi Nakamoto, notices had been despatched to P2PKH variations of addresses with no or solely mud balances, whereas the actual balances sit in older P2PK outputs. If correct, that distinction might grow to be central to the crypto neighborhood’s evaluation of whether or not significant discover was ever delivered to the related holders.
The case now sits on the intersection of authorized doctrine and protocol actuality. The plaintiffs are asking a New York court docket to deal with inactivity as abandonment and to acknowledge claimed possession over wallets that haven’t moved for years. Bitcoin customers, in the meantime, are prone to deal with a narrower however extra basic problem: an handle will be dormant as a result of its proprietor is gone, as a result of keys are misplaced, or as a result of the holder has no intention of shifting cash. On-chain, these instances can look an identical.
At press time, BTC traded at $77,441.
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