A New York lawsuit filed by Noah Doe claims legal ownership of 39,069 Bitcoin wallet addresses.
Summary
- Plaintiff Noah Doe filed a lawsuit in New York on May 1, 2026, seeking a ruling that the 39,069 abandoned Bitcoin wallets are his under New York’s forfeiture law.
- The filing was made through Brooklyn firm Lewis and Lin LLC under New York Personal Property Law Article 7-B, which is a lost property found and abandoned statute.
- The 39,069 listed wallets reportedly hold an estimated 3.7 million BTC worth approximately $285 billion, including addresses linked to Satoshi Nakamoto and Mt. Gox hacker.
The New York Bitcoin wallet lawsuit filed on May 1, 2026 in New York State Supreme Court asks the court to declare 39,069 invalid addresses legally owned by Noah Doe.
The complaint, filed under reference number 153119/2026 by Brooklyn law firm Lewis and Lin LLC, invokes New York Personal Property Law Article 7-B.
Doe says he found the bags in October 2024 after identifying a security vulnerability that caused the owners to be unable to retrieve their items.
He developed a proprietary algorithm to identify wallets that met the legal standard for abandonment, reported them to the NYPD, and spent more than a year trying to locate their owners before filing suit.
What the Bitcoin wallet actually says
The complaint seeks a judgment declaring that Noah Doe and his two chartered companies, ABC Company and XYZ Company, are the legal owners of 39,069 wallets and their contents.
Doe transferred ownership rights in all but 18 funds to ABC Company on December 1, 2025, which subsequently transferred 17.7% to XYZ Company.
The listed addresses include the wallet “12c6D,” associated with Satoshi Nakamoto, and “1Feex,” linked to the hacked exchange Mt. Gox. Sani, founder of the blockchain analytics platform Timechain Index, estimated the total holdings of all listed wallets at around 3.7 million BTC, which is worth around $285 billion at current rates. Crypto.news has tracked extensive legislative efforts to establish legal frameworks around Bitcoin holdings.
Why the lawsuit would set an example of an abandoned crypto asset
The main legal question is whether dormant, private Bitcoin wallets can be treated as abandoned property under existing state law. Exchange-traded funds already have dormancy and escheatment structures, but private equity funds without any institutional charter remain in a legal gray area that no court has formally addressed.
The founder of the Timechain Index noted a potential procedural error: claimants sent legal notices to Pay-to-Public-Key-Hash addresses, while most wallet balances of the Satoshi era reside in anonymous Pay-to-Public-Key format documents. If the court accepts the claim, it may establish a precedent for how the laws of abandoned property apply to property divided entirely without the right of exchange.
Crypto.news reported on the US government’s handling of Bitcoin, as the legal and regulatory framework around Bitcoin ownership continues to evolve. The Bitcoin (BTC) price page tracks market reactions live as the case draws attention to dynamic wallet dynamics.
