A New York lawsuit is asking a court to declare ownership of tens of thousands of long‑dormant Bitcoin addresses — a claim that, if upheld, could touch off a major legal and technical debate about what “abandoned” means for self‑custodied crypto.
What’s being asked
- Plaintiffs: “Noah Doe” and two Wyoming LLCs named in the filing as ABC Company and XYZ Company.
- Court: Supreme Court of the State of New York, County of New York.
- Relief sought: a declaratory judgment that 39,069 inactive Bitcoin addresses are abandoned property under New York lost‑and‑found law and therefore belong to the plaintiffs. The filing is a summons and amended complaint asking the court to recognize those claimed rights — it is not a court order granting ownership.
How the plaintiffs say they found the wallets
- Doe says he identified three groups of dormant wallets between December 2024 and April 2025: 1,625 (1,544 after deduplication); 546; and a final group of 39,911. After exclusions and alleged owner responses, the plaintiffs say 39,069 wallets remain at issue.
- According to the complaint, Doe reported the wallet lists to the New York Police Department on three occasions using USB drives; the NYPD later returned the drives. Plaintiffs say those steps and public notices satisfy New York lost‑property procedures and that title vested in Doe under New York Personal Property Law § 257, before assignments transferred most claimed rights into the two LLCs.
Why the case grabbed the Bitcoin community
- Outside on‑chain analysis caught attention: Sani of TimechainIndex.com posted that the addresses named in the case collectively hold roughly 3,791,121.17697938 BTC and include addresses attributed in public attribution efforts to Satoshi Nakamoto, early miners, Casascius coins, lost coins, hackers and other entities. Those aggregate BTC totals and the attributions do not appear in the complaint itself; the filing lists addresses and lays out the legal theory but does not include labels like “Satoshi” or the 3.79 million BTC figure.
- The sheer scale — millions of BTC tied to dormant addresses — is what made the filing viral among Bitcoin observers.
Legal theory vs. protocol reality
- The plaintiffs’ legal argument treats inactive, self‑custodied addresses as abandoned property recoverable under state law. The complaint acknowledges the practical truth that coins cannot be moved without the private keys, yet it analogizes wallets to bank accounts, arguing a wallet can be uniquely identified by protocol, address and transaction history.
- That analogy is likely to be controversial: ownership of a bank account and control over a self‑custodied Bitcoin UTXO function very differently. On‑chain dormancy can reflect many states (lost keys, deceased owners, or simply no intent to move funds) that look identical to observers.
The on‑chain notice campaign behind the case
- The suit appears tied to a public notification campaign connected to an entity using the Salomon Brothers name. Plaintiffs say Doe retained Salomon Brothers Strategic Advisors in February 2025 to help notify potential owners and to filter out wallets incorrectly listed as abandoned.
- According to the complaint, a cyber/blockchain specialist sent on‑chain notices using OP_RETURN and Salomon Brothers hosted a notice webpage. An August 2025 press release from the firm framed the effort as protecting other wallet holders from risks posed by abandoned wallets and gave owners at least 90 days to respond either by signing an on‑chain transaction with the private key or submitting a form on the website.
Context on “Salomon Brothers”
- Analysts caution this is not the historic Wall Street Salomon firm that became part of Citigroup, but a newer group that acquired the name. The current Salomon Brothers describes itself as an “alliance of professional practices” offering advisory services, real estate finance and research.
Third‑party on‑chain analysis: Galaxy Research
- Galaxy Research labeled the OP_RETURN activity the “Great Bitcoin Dusting.” Its analysis found an unknown actor sent 41,523 OP_RETURN messages from 3,738 sender addresses to 39,423 recipient addresses, which together held 2,334,482.52 BTC at the time the messages were sent.
- Galaxy said the campaign ran in two phases: initial trial messages without Salomon links, then waves including links to Salomon’s website. It also found 98.82% of the notified addresses were legacy P2PKH addresses and calculated an average adjusted dormancy of about 2,171 days (roughly 5.95 years).
A technical wrinkle that matters
- Some observers (including Sani) argue that notices were often posted to P2PKH forms of addresses with little or no balance, while the “real” balances might reside in older P2PK outputs. If true, that distinction could be decisive to whether meaningful notice was ever delivered to the actual holders of substantial balances.
Why this matters for Bitcoin users and the courts
- If a court accepts that prolonged inactivity equals abandonment under New York law, it could create a novel legal pathway to claim self‑custodied on‑chain assets — but doing so means courts would be importing property doctrines into a technical environment where control is determined by possession of cryptographic keys.
- The case raises practical questions about notice, due process, cross‑jurisdictional claims on global public ledgers, and the protections (or risks) for holders who practice self‑custody.
What to watch next
- Whether the New York court accepts the plaintiffs’ declaratory theory or dismisses the case on legal or jurisdictional grounds.
- Technical discovery or expert analysis that clarifies how notices were delivered and whether the wallets named actually correspond to the large balances being discussed.
- Community and industry responses on precedent for abandoned crypto and what it means for self‑custody norms.
At press time, BTC traded at $77,441.
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