After fourteen years, Satoshi-era Bitcoin is once again at the center of a lawsuit. On the 6th of July, a second amicus brief has been filed to oppose “Noah Doe’s” attempt to assert ownership of Satoshi’s coins as “abandoned property.”
The first filing happened back in May 2026, when “Salomon Brothers” was claiming the legal ownership of Satoshi’s coins.
That said, the three pseudonymous plaintiffs—Noah Doe, ABC Company, and XYZ Company—are making attempts to acquire legal ownership of 39,069 dormant Bitcoin wallets that they did not create and could not access.
Why does Noah Doe claim these wallets were abandoned?
For context, the plaintiffs claim that they posted notices on the blockchain using Bitcoin’s OP_RETURN function. It was to direct wallet owners to an abandonment notice and provide them with 90 days to reply.
After the notice period, approximately 2,900 wallets were deleted, including 424 that were activated, leaving 39,069 that they say were abandoned.
But there are significant obstacles in the lawsuit.
In addition to acknowledging that the plaintiffs lack the private keys required to access the Bitcoin [BTC], it provides no evidence that the owners saw the notices and only uses wallet inactivity as proof of abandonment.
The case presented by defendants
Hence, the defendants contend the case should be dismissed. They caution that since many investors purposefully leave Bitcoin unaltered for years, this would compromise digital property rights.
The filing noted,
Granting the relief Plaintiffs seek would not quiet title, it would disrupt entire industries and the expectations of every owner of digital assets.
Lastly, it states that Noah Doe is ineligible to be a legitimate “finder” since he only discovered public wallet addresses and never acquired the private keys or authority over the Bitcoin.
Meanwhile, recent blockchain activity complicated that argument further.
In Bitcoin block 952,104, the Satoshi Bitcoin wallet with the address 1LwWtSs7tMCwcRczQd5kVMv3xpWw6w4Sxe, which had held 35.55 BTC since the 27th of March, 2011, moved 15 BTC to a new address and returned the remaining 20.55 BTC as change.
The wallet’s movement is noteworthy because it is one of 39,069 Bitcoin addresses that have been named as defendants in a lawsuit filed in New York by Noah Doe.
Doe claims that the dormant wallets were abandoned and is suing for ownership of approximately 3.8 million BTC under New York law.
The 1LwWt wallet was on the final list of defendants after failing to reply to a notice sent on the 31st of July, 2025.
Remarking on the same, Alex Thorn, Head of Research at Galaxy Research, noted,
Needless to say, long-time Bitcoin owners frequently hold their coins in self-custody for years at a time without transacting.
Therefore, wallet inactivity by itself does not establish abandonment. That’s because ownership ultimately rests on control of the private keys rather than transaction history.
Final Summary
- The three plaintiffs, mainly Noah Doe, are making attempts to acquire legal ownership of 39,069 dormant Bitcoin wallets.
- The defendants argue that Noah Doe is ineligible to be a legitimate “finder” since he never acquired the private keys.
