---
title: "Satoshi Nakamoto facing legal trouble? $83.7 billion worth of BTC about to be legally claimed?"
type: "News"
locale: "en"
url: "https://longbridge.com/en/news/288241686.md"
description: "An anonymous plaintiff, Noah Doe, is suing in New York State Supreme Court to claim ownership of over 3.7 million dormant Bitcoins, including ~1.09 million linked to Satoshi Nakamoto, valued at $83.7 billion. Using NY's lost property laws, the plaintiff argues these assets were abandoned after notifying owners via blockchain and press releases. While a ruling grants no private keys, it creates a 'defective title' risk for holders if funds enter regulated exchanges."
datetime: "2026-06-01T08:40:52.000Z"
locales:
  - [zh-CN](https://longbridge.com/zh-CN/news/288241686.md)
  - [en](https://longbridge.com/en/news/288241686.md)
  - [zh-HK](https://longbridge.com/zh-HK/news/288241686.md)
---

# Satoshi Nakamoto facing legal trouble? $83.7 billion worth of BTC about to be legally claimed?

**Can you seize control without a key? If the plaintiff wins this case, any dormant Bitcoin could be claimed by someone else through the courts.**

Unexpectedly, Bitcoin founder Satoshi Nakamoto will one day face a lawsuit, with the "ownership" of his wallet address potentially being taken away. And you, the reader of this article, may also be one of the "defendants," if you also have a dormant Bitcoin address.

In March of this year, the New York State Supreme Court accepted a lawsuit: the plaintiff sought to confirm his ownership of more than 3.7 million Bitcoins (approximately $274 billion) associated with 39,069 Bitcoin addresses. The plaintiff, using the pseudonym Noah Doe, and two unnamed Wyoming LLCs (pseudonyms "ABC Corporation" and "XYZ Corporation").

The plaintiffs are asking the New York State Supreme Court to issue a declaratory judgment under New York State's lost and found law, confirming their ownership of these dormant assets. More importantly, these 39,069 addresses include addresses suspected to belong to Bitcoin founder Satoshi Nakamoto (21,744 addresses holding approximately 1.09 million Bitcoins, worth approximately $83.7 billion at current prices). In short, an anonymous individual and their Wyoming-registered company are attempting to have a New York court rule that Satoshi Nakamoto's Bitcoins (and many other cryptocurrencies) are lost property, and that they rightfully own them by "finding" them. Galaxy analyzed the plaintiffs' potential motives and identities, their impact on Bitcoin, and the likelihood of the plaintiffs winning. Odaily Planet Daily has compiled and simplified the full text as follows. Case Overview and Plaintiff's Strategy Analysis The plaintiffs have filed an application with the New York State Supreme Court, requesting the court to declare that they own 39,069 dormant Bitcoin addresses and all assets therein. The legal basis is the declaration of ownership under Rule 3001 of the New York State Rules of Civil Procedure, which is fundamentally based on New York State's lost and found law, namely Section 7-B of the Personal Property Law. This section stipulates that if a finder turns in lost property to the police and the owner does not deny ownership within the prescribed waiting period, the finder ultimately acquires ownership of the lost property. The plaintiffs are attempting to apply this old framework to Bitcoin. The specific procedure was as follows: Noah Doe, as the finder, delivered a USB drive containing addresses (not private keys or proof of address ownership, just publicly available addresses) to the 17th Precinct of the New York City Police Department, thus tackling the case as a form of handing over lost property to the police; subsequently, he initiated an OP\_RETURN notification on the Bitcoin blockchain and released a press release, thus tackling the case as a form of contacting the owner; finally, experts determined that each address was worth less than $10, allowing the case to proceed to the fastest possible stage under the terms of the law. It's important to note that even if the plaintiffs completely win the case, they will only receive a piece of paper and a court statement, nothing more; they will not receive any private keys, nor will they be able to transfer any Bitcoin. The real value of the New York ruling lies in other aspects. It will serve as a "defective title": if these Bitcoins appear in any regulated place in the future, the plaintiff can use this document to challenge exchanges or custodians. This is the potential risk this case poses to Bitcoin holders, and why this seemingly absurd lawsuit still deserves close scrutiny. The following timeline consists of two parts: the plaintiff's factual account of discovering the addresses, and the procedural history of the case during the court proceedings. In October 2024, Noah Doe claimed he had discovered "security issues" with certain addresses and developed an "algorithm" to mark abandoned addresses. (These addresses do not actually pose a "security issue"); On December 26, 2024, Noah Doe first "found" approximately 1,625 addresses. A USB drive containing these addresses was delivered to the 17th Precinct of the New York City Police Department on January 1, 2025; In February 2025, Noah Doe hired Salomon Brothers Strategic Advisors as a consultant; On March 31 and April 14, 2025, Noah Doe again "found" 546 and 39,911 addresses respectively. After each "found," he would send a USB drive containing the addresses to the relevant department. The disk was sent to the police station; From June 30 to July 10, 2025, Noah Doe sent “abandonment notices” to each address via OP\_RETURN; On August 7, 2025, a press release was issued to global media, and research reports from CoinDesk, Bitcoinist, Yahoo Finance, Investing.com, and Galaxy Digital all reported on it; From August 2025 to February 2026, Salomon Brothers received threatening emails, including more than 50 emails containing only “4 8 15 16 23 42”, demanding a payment of $1.5 million and 50 One Bitcoin; On October 10, 2025, the 90-day period for owners to claim the lost assets ended; In December 2025, Noah Doe transferred these addresses to ABC Company and placed 98% of its interests into an irrevocable trust; ABC Company transferred 17.7% of its interests to XYZ Company; On March 11, 2026, the original summons and complaint were filed, and Judge Arlene P. Bruce annotated the original order to appear in court to testify; On March 23, 2026, Emily Judge Morales-Minerva recused himself from the case; From March 25 to April 17, 2026, Judge Carlos J. Voltron issued an order to appear in court (allowing the use of pseudonyms) and an order authorizing alternative service of process via OP\_RETURN (without notifying the opposing party); On May 1, 2026, the first amended complaint expanded the number of defendants to 1 to 39,069 and included a complete list of addresses; From May 21 to 22, 2026, on-chain execution services were performed on 98 of Bitcoin blocks 950,446 to 950,576. Batch transactions; On May 22, 2026, Carlos J. Voltron filed a confirmation of service, which included verification reports for each batch of transactions and verification details on lines 39,069 (Documents 27-29). The plaintiff's legal basis and tactics: Section 7-B (Sections 251-258) of the New York State Personal Property Code provides for a brief lost and found system. It offers two different avenues for the finder to acquire ownership, and the plaintiff in this case invoked both.

-   Option A: Safekeeping (Articles 252, 253/254, 257(1)). Article 252 stipulates that anyone who finds lost items valued at $20 or more must return the items to the owner or hand them over to the police for safekeeping within 10 days. Articles 253(7) and 254 stipulate that the police keep different amounts of lost items depending on their value: items valued at less than $100 are kept for 3 months, items valued at $100-$500 are kept for 6 months, items valued at $500-$5000 are kept for 1 year, and items valued at $5000 or more are kept for 3 years.
    
-   Option B: Shortcut for items under $10 (Article 257(2))
    
-   Option B: Shortcut for items under $10 (Article 257(2)
    
For lost items valued at less than $10, ownership reverts to the finder one year after the finder has made reasonable efforts to locate and return the item to the owner, but has not been successful. The unnamed "independent expert" in the complaint determined the "current state" value of each address to be less than $10, arguing that the likelihood of recovering the item was low. This valuation determined the entire procedural course of the case because it included each address within the uniform one-year ownership period stipulated in Section 257(2). This also made the Option A process shorter, requiring only three months of detention for items valued at less than $100 under Section 254. The plaintiff's arguments are listed in the complaint. Each argument must be valid for the next to be valid, creating a chain of interconnected arguments. These addresses are considered lost property. Addresses are considered property, like bank accounts. According to this view, losing a private key does not result in property damage; therefore, the contents are merely "lost," and the finder can retrieve them. Noah Doe is the finder, and the NYPD's safekeeping complies with relevant regulations. Section 7-B, paragraph 252, requires that the finder turn the lost property over to the police, and the plaintiffs argue that the USB drive containing the address information they handed over to the 17th Precinct complies with this requirement. Ownership has been transferred to the finder. For property valued at less than $10, paragraph 257(2) states that if the finder has made reasonable efforts to locate the owner but has not been successful, ownership has been transferred to the finder one year after the find. The OP\_RETURN notice, press release, and 90-day claim period are all considered to have made reasonable efforts. These addresses have been abandoned. Noah Doe's "algorithm" flags addresses that he personally holds, that have not been used for at least five years, and that have remained unclaimed during periods of significant price increases. Approximately 424 owners who responded by transferring tokens were removed from the list, while the remaining 39,069 unresponsive owners became defendants. Notification via OP\_RETURN is legal. Because the alleged owners are unidentified and cannot be located, the court authorized alternative service of process under Rule 308(5) of the New York State Rules of Civil Procedure (CPLR), namely, sending an on-chain notification pointing to the complaint to each address. The plaintiff can file the lawsuit anonymously. Given the known risk of kidnapping for major Bitcoin holders, the plaintiff was granted permission to use an alias in the lawsuit. Who is the owner? Galaxy analyzed the address that the plaintiff, Noah Doe, claimed to have "found" using their Bitcoin full node and internal research database. As of May 25, 2026, 39,069 "Noah Doe addresses" held 3,799,629 bitcoins, worth approximately $293.5 billion at $77,245 per bitcoin. These values ​​are not evenly distributed, but rather concentrated in several different sets, each telling a different story. The image shows the composition of the address Noah Doe found. The image contains 21,923 addresses and approximately 1,096,134 bitcoins (worth about $84.7 billion). These are early mined Bitcoins, linked to Bitcoin's creator through the "Patoshi" random number pattern, and they have never been moved. Mt. Gox Hacker Addresses: Only one address, approximately 79,957 Bitcoins (approximately $6.2 billion). This is John Doe #1; these Bitcoins were stolen from the early Bitcoin exchange Mt. Gox and have remained untouched since 2011. They are disputed property that investigators have been tracking for years. Counterparty Destruction Addresses: Only one address, approximately 2,131 Bitcoins (approximately $160 million). This is John Doe#104, a provably unspendable "destroyed" address. No one ever held its key because, by design, such a key simply doesn't exist. Other dormant addresses: 7,144 addresses, approximately 2,621,407 bitcoins (about $202.5 billion). These addresses contain a large number of early holders and exchange-era bitcoins that haven't been moved for years. This dormancy is long-standing. If we sort each address by the year of the last on-chain transfer of bitcoins, we find that most of these transfers occurred in the early days of Bitcoin. The vast majority of these bitcoins were last traded between 2009 and 2013, during which time the price of bitcoins skyrocketed from almost zero to hundreds of dollars.

However, many of these addresses had previously been claimed. In Kleiman v. Wright (Southern District of Florida, 2018), Australian businessman Craig Wright submitted a list containing 16,404 early block addresses, which he claimed belonged to as part of his later-rejected claim to Satoshi Nakamoto.

But many of these addresses had already been claimed. In Kleiman v. Wright (Southern District of Florida, 2018), Australian businessman Craig Wright submitted a list containing 16,404 early block addresses, which he claimed belonged to as part of his later-rejected claim to Satoshi Nakamoto.

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