NY Lawsuit Claims Ownership of 3.8M Bitcoin Including Satoshi's Addresses
In brief
- Anonymous plaintiff 'Noah Doe' claims 3.8M Bitcoin worth ~$293B in NY Supreme Court lawsuit
- Lawsuit identifies 39,069 dormant addresses via algorithm, invokes NY abandoned property statutes from 1958
- Without private keys, no entity can move coins—ruling would be largely symbolic, analysts say
The claim and legal theory
The initial filing landed on March 11, 2026, with an amended complaint following on May 1, 2026, under Index No. 153119/2026. The plaintiffs' legal theory leans on New York's abandoned property laws, statutes that date back to 1958.
The mechanics are straightforward—at least on paper. The plaintiffs used an algorithm to identify dormant wallets and reported them to the New York Police Department as lost property after unsuccessful on-chain notification attempts. They then assigned a nominal value of under $10 to each address as a legal maneuver to keep filing costs low.
The practical problem
There's a critical hitch. Without the private keys associated with those 39,069 addresses, no entity on earth can move those coins. A favorable ruling would amount to a piece of paper saying you own something you physically cannot touch, transfer, or spend.
Analysts have been blunt about the implausibility. Galaxy Research analyst Alex Thorn has called the claim implausible. Former Ripple CTO David Schwartz weighed in with similar skepticism, citing the enormous gap between the plaintiffs' purported claim and the actual inaccessibility of the assets.
Context and implications
The 3.8 million BTC in question represents a substantial chunk of Bitcoin's total supply. Bitcoin has a hard cap of 21 million coins. Estimates suggest that millions of coins are effectively lost forever due to forgotten passwords, discarded hard drives, and deceased holders—making dormant wallets a fixture of the blockchain landscape.
As of late May 2026, there has been no substantive court ruling or procedural update in the case. The lawsuit has generated significant attention on social media, particularly on X, but the legal path forward remains unclear.
