A New York lawsuit filed this week asks a court to declare that 39,069 long-dormant Bitcoin wallets — collectively holding an estimated 3.79 million BTC — are abandoned property under state law. The plaintiff, Noah Doe, along with two Wyoming LLCs, seeks declaratory relief, not a court order awarding ownership. The case hinges on a novel application of New York's lost-and-found statute to cryptocurrency addresses.
The Legal Argument
The plaintiffs argue that under New York Personal Property Law § 257, title to the wallets vested in Doe after he reported the wallet lists to the NYPD and followed notice steps. The complaint identifies three sets of dormant wallets discovered between December 2024 and April 2025, totaling 39,069 wallets after exclusions and alleged owner responses. The plaintiffs claim they submitted the lists to the NYPD on three occasions via USB drives, and the NYPD returned the drives.
But there's a catch: the lawsuit acknowledges that the Bitcoin cannot actually be moved without the corresponding private keys. The legal argument treats the dormant addresses as 'recoverable property' — a stretch that may test how far courts will go when applying old property laws to new technology.
Who Owns Those Wallets?
External analysis from TimechainIndex.com says the addresses hold 3,791,121.17697938 BTC and include addresses attributed to Satoshi Nakamoto, early miners, Casascius Coins, lost coins, hackers, and unidentified entities. Those details aren't in the complaint itself. The plaintiffs are essentially asking the court to declare that the original owners — if they exist — have abandoned their claim.
The lawsuit is connected to a broader on-chain notice campaign run by Salomon Brothers Strategic Advisors. That organization — not the historic Wall Street firm but a newer one that acquired the Salomon name — sent OP_RETURN messages to dormant wallets and hosted a notice webpage. Galaxy Research analyzed the campaign, calling it the 'Great Bitcoin Dusting,' involving 41,523 messages from 3,738 sender addresses to 39,423 recipient addresses holding 2,334,482.52 BTC at the time.
What Happens Next
The case is at an early stage. The summons and amended complaint seek declaratory relief — meaning the plaintiffs want the court to define the legal status of the wallets, not to immediately hand them over. A judge will have to decide whether New York's lost-and-found law even applies to digital assets that can't be physically possessed. The NYPD's return of the USB drives could become a key fact: did that constitute acceptance of the reporting, or was it just handing back evidence?
For now, the wallets sit untouched. The next concrete step is likely a response from the defendants — the wallet owners, if they can be identified — or a motion from the plaintiffs to move the case forward. No court dates have been set.
