A New York lawsuit seeking legal ownership of dormant Bitcoin wallets has narrowed after several listed addresses moved funds.
Summary
- Noah Doe’s legal team dropped 44 wallets after on-chain activity challenged the abandonment claim.
- The removed wallets held 21,443 BTC when the lawsuit started, according to Galaxy’s Thorn.
- Related filings and amicus briefs argue dormant self-custody does not prove Bitcoin was abandoned.
Galaxy Research head Alex Thorn said the plaintiffs in the “abandoned bitcoin” lawsuit dropped 44 of 39,069 listed defendants. The case was filed by “Noah Doe” and two Wyoming entities seeking title to long-dormant Bitcoin wallets.
Thorn said every removed wallet had moved coins on-chain since the case was filed. “Every single one had moved coins onchain since the case was filed,” he wrote in a July 8 thread on X.
Meanwhile, the lawsuit asks the New York Supreme Court to treat the wallets as abandoned property under New York’s lost-and-found law. The original claim targeted 39,069 wallets holding about 3.7 million BTC, including addresses linked to Satoshi Nakamoto and the Mt. Gox hacker.
On-chain activity challenges dormancy claim
Thorn said the 44 dropped addresses held 21,443 BTC when the case started. He added that those wallets later moved 46,334 BTC on-chain and now hold about 3,097 BTC.
The activity matters because the complaint itself said wallets that took on-chain action would be removed from the case. Thorn said the latest filing appears to follow that standard, removing addresses that no longer fit the claimed dormant profile.
The update adds more pressure to the plaintiffs’ theory. Dormant Bitcoin can stay untouched for years without being lost, especially when holders use cold storage. A wallet can remain inactive while the owner still controls the private key.
Moreover, a 30 BTC wallet moved after nearly 15 years of inactivity while being linked to the lawsuit, as reported by crypto.news. That movement followed other transfers from named addresses, weakening claims that inactivity alone proves abandonment.
Legal pushback grows
The case has already drawn formal opposition. Attorney Ian R. Cohen challenged the lawsuit and argued that dormant self-custodied Bitcoin does not qualify as abandoned property under New York law.
Cohen’s filing came before a July 14 hearing tied to procedural issues in the case. The court had stayed further action, limiting the plaintiffs’ ability to seek a default judgment before those issues were heard.
The Digital Chamber also filed an amicus brief opposing the claim. The group warned that the plaintiffs’ reading of New York law could affect self-custodied digital assets far beyond the wallets named in the lawsuit.
Galaxy’s earlier report also said a court win would not hand the plaintiffs private keys. It would only give them a legal declaration, which could create problems if any coins later reached a regulated exchange or custodian.
Satoshi-linked coins remain central
The lawsuit remains closely watched because many listed wallets are tied to early Bitcoin mining. Galaxy said the claim includes more than 21,000 Patoshi-pattern addresses believed by researchers to be linked to Bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto.
Thorn said there is “no evidence any of the 39K addresses are ‘lost,’” while the latest removals show clear evidence that some wallets were still controlled. His comments add to the argument that long silence on-chain is not the same as legal abandonment.
The plaintiffs still have thousands of addresses in the case. Still, the removal of active wallets shows the defendant list is not fixed and that on-chain activity can change the shape of the lawsuit.
