A lawsuit filed in New York seeks to classify 39,069 dormant Bitcoin addresses — including wallets linked to Satoshi Nakamoto — as lost property under state law. The plaintiffs, Noah Doe and two Wyoming entities, argue the wallets qualify as abandoned under Article 7-B of New York's Personal Property Law because the coins have sat untouched for more than a year. If successful, the move could effectively hand over control of roughly 3.8 million BTC, about 18% of Bitcoin's total supply, currently valued at around $293.5 billion.
Article 7-B and abandoned property
The legal argument hinges on a technicality: under New York law, property left unclaimed for over a year can be considered abandoned and turned over to the state. The plaintiffs say they've made 'reasonable efforts' to find the owners — pushing on-chain OP_RETURN notices, delivering USB drives to the NYPD, and issuing press releases. A similar campaign by Salomon Brothers in 2025 using OP_RETURN messages prompted hundreds of addresses to move their coins, but the silent ones became defendants in this case.
The $10 valuation vs. reality
There's a glaring math problem in the complaint. The plaintiffs claim each address is worth less than $10 under state law. But the median address in the lawsuit holds exactly 50 BTC — the original mining reward — and the average holds 97.25 BTC. At current prices, even 50 BTC is worth millions. The court will have to square that contradiction, and it's not hard to imagine a judge asking how a wallet stuffed with 50 Bitcoin can be treated as a $9 trinket.
Satoshi's Patoshi addresses
About 21,923 of the targeted addresses follow the Patoshi pattern — the distinctive mining signature attributed to Satoshi Nakamoto. Those wallets hold about 1.096 million BTC. Including them makes this more than a property dispute; it's a direct challenge to the founding myth of Bitcoin. Satoshi hasn't moved a coin in years, but the lawsuit treats the founder's silence as abandonment, not strategy.
The Mt. Gox tension
One address in the suit holds 79,957 BTC tied directly to the 2011 Mt. Gox hack. That creates a weird legal knot: stolen property can't really be 'abandoned' by the thief, but the exchange's bankruptcy proceedings have already tangled ownership. The plaintiffs are essentially asking a New York court to sort out competing claims of theft and abandonment in a single stroke.
The plaintiffs have been creative with service — OP_RETURN transactions, press releases, and physical USB drives left with police. Whether any of that counts as proper notice under New York law is an open question. A hearing is expected in the coming months, and the crypto world will be watching to see if a state court can actually declare Satoshi's stash lost and found.
