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Someone in New York is trying to claim ownership of roughly 3.8 million Bitcoin, including wallets believed to belong to Satoshi Nakamoto, by invoking a property law that predates the internet by decades. The estimated value of the claim: approximately $293 billion.
The anatomy of a very ambitious lawsuit
The case was filed in New York Supreme Court by an anonymous plaintiff going by “Noah Doe,” alongside two Wyoming-based LLCs cryptically named ABC Company and XYZ Company. The initial filing landed on March 11, 2026, with an amended complaint following on May 1, 2026, under Index No. 153119/2026.
The plaintiffs are seeking a legal declaration of ownership over 39,069 dormant Bitcoin addresses. Their legal theory leans on New York’s abandoned property laws, statutes that date back to 1958, well before anyone imagined a peer-to-peer electronic cash system.
According to the filing, the plaintiffs used an algorithm to identify these dormant wallets. They then reported the wallets to the New York Police Department as lost property, after what they describe as a year of unsuccessful attempts at on-chain notifications to locate the original owners.
For court purposes, the plaintiffs have assigned a nominal value of under $10 to each address. This is a legal maneuver to keep filing costs low while pursuing assets worth a collective $293 billion at prevailing market prices.
The addresses in question are believed to include wallets associated with Satoshi Nakamoto and early Bitcoin miners.
The private key problem
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.
Galaxy Research analyst Alex Thorn has called the claim implausible. Former Ripple CTO David Schwartz has weighed in with similar skepticism, citing the enormous gap between the plaintiffs’ purported claim and the actual inaccessibility of the assets.
Why this matters beyond the courtroom
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, and estimates suggest that millions of coins are effectively lost forever due to forgotten passwords, discarded hard drives, and deceased holders.
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.
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