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New York Lawsuit Takes Aim At 3.79 Million Dormant Bitcoin

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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 beneath New York lost-and-found legislation.

The submitting, submitted within the Supreme Court of the State of New York, County of New York, names ABC Company, XYZ Company and Noah Doe as plaintiffs, with “John Does 1–39,069” listed as respondents. It shouldn’t be a court docket order awarding possession. It is 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.

According to the criticism, Doe allegedly recognized three units of dormant digital wallets between December 2024 and April 2025. The first 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 Bizarre NY Legal Fight

The criticism says Doe reported the pockets lists to the New York City Police Department on three separate events utilizing USB drives. The NYPD later returned the drives, in response to the submitting. The plaintiffs argue that these steps glad New York lost-property procedures and that title vested in Doe beneath New York Personal Property Law § 257 earlier than later assignments moved a lot of the claimed rights into ABC Company and XYZ Company.

The dimension 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 embrace addresses attributed to Satoshi Nakamoto, early miners, Casascius Coins, misplaced cash, hackers and unidentified entities. That combination BTC determine and people attributions don’t seem within the criticism’s physique. The submitting itself lists addresses and lays out the authorized principle, but it surely doesn’t state “Satoshi Nakamoto,” “Casascius,” or the 3.79 million BTC whole.

The authorized argument is uncommon as a result of it treats dormant Bitcoin addresses as recoverable property, despite the fact that the criticism acknowledges that cryptocurrency can’t be withdrawn with out the related personal 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. But 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 in another way in apply.

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 guide 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 campaign as an effort to handle dangers round deserted wallets. In an August 2025 press launch, the agency stated deserted wallets may turn out to be susceptible to better-resourced attackers and argued that “securing wallets protects” different pockets holders. The launch stated notices had been inserted into long-dormant wallets and gave homeowners at the very least 90 days to reply, both by conducting an on-chain transaction with the personal key or through the use of a kind on a Salomon Brothers webpage.

That Salomon Brothers connection requires cautious context. Galaxy Research described the entity concerned as not the historic Wall Street agency that turned a part of Citigroup, however a more recent group that acquired the Salomon identify. 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 “Great Bitcoin Dusting.” According to 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 common 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 previous 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 true balances sit in older P2PK outputs. If correct, that distinction may turn out to be central to the crypto group’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 concentrate on a narrower however extra elementary concern: 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 transferring cash. On-chain, these instances can look equivalent.

At press time, BTC traded at $77,441.

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