An individual calling himself “Noah Doe,” along with two Wyoming LLCs, filed a lawsuit in New York Supreme Court asking the court to declare that they are the legal owners of 39,069 Bitcoin addresses that contain approximately 3.8 million BTC – worth $293 billion at current prices.
The a casewhich was issued on March 11, 2026, and updated on May 1, 2026 (Index No. 153119/2026), is believed to be the first attempt in US history to name Bitcoin under the law of lost property.
A vehicle authorized by New York Personal Property Law Article 7-B, a the law designed for lost tangible items – a purse found on the side of the road, say, or jewelry left in a car. The law states that a person who has found that property is lost to the police, will try to find the owner, and if they do not receive an answer within the specified time, they can take their responsibility legally.
Noah Doe’s complaint alleges that Bitcoin’s residential addresses are “lost property” under the system, that his USB drives of addresses provided to the NYPD 17th Precinct meet the requirements, and that the title to all 39,069 addresses he provided over three days: December 26, 2025, 2025 March 2016, 2025, 2026, 2025, 2025, 20 26/26/26 March 20, 31, 26, 26, 2025, 20 26/26/20
This law has never been applied to cryptocurrency. Section 7-B is prescribed for material goods which the acquirer carries and delivers to the authorities. The appellant never got hold of the private keys to any of these addresses and could not transfer the money to the police or to any owner who came.
A Bitcoin address, unlike a lost wallet, remains accessible to the original owner regardless of whether someone discovers it – the money does not move unless the original owner signs the transaction.
What bitcoin lawsuits want
The 39,069 addresses listed as adversaries are not a random sample of Bitcoin.
According to blockchain research company Galaxy Digitalwho published a detailed analysis of the case in May 2026, about 21,923 addresses of the accused carrying what researchers call “Patoshi” nonce pattern – and the finger onchain many say Bitcoin pseudonymous creator, Satoshi Nakamoto. The addresses alone have about 1.096 million BTC, worth about $84.7 billion.
Also on the blacklist: one address with 79,957 BTC stolen in 2011 Mt. Gox hack – a currency that has been followed by researchers for more than a decade – is a single address that has a Counterparty address “burning”, meaning that it is immutable and has never been controlled by anyone. The money of Mt. Gox is a story that is being used to recover and is not abandoned, by any definition.
The average address of the opposition consists of 50 BTC, which is worth about $3.86 million. On average they hold 97.25 BTC, worth around $7.5 million.
According to Galaxy’s Onchain data, 99.9% of the accused addresses have BTC worth more than $10.
That $10 figure is very important in the construction of the case. The complaint relies on the unnamed expert’s opinion that each address was worth more than $10 “as is” at the time of discovery, on the basis that the recovery of the contents is unknown.
This single calculation puts all 39,069 addresses in Section 257(2) of Section 7-B – a very fast process, which has the title of the finder in just one year from the date of acquisition, without the need for many years of police.
The figure of $10 is the legal basis for this case, because it is the number that the prosecutors use to say that the bags qualify for New York’s most-lost title method, even though the amount is the most important in the market.
If the addresses are priced close to their market prices, they fall into the high-end bottles, which have police requirements for three years. The one-year summary process that the appeal relies on would not exist.
The three claim dates that gave the title exactly corresponded to the three dates found plus one year – the time period that works if the average $10 valuation is there. The expert for this calculation is not mentioned anywhere in the files.
Contact the 2025 Fusting Campaign
The opposition addresses did not come out of nowhere. Galaxy Research to be known all but one of them in October 2025 report on the blockchain “dust” I have lighted – a to do where bits of BTC are sent to addresses, usually to track wallet activity.
Between June and July 2025, more than 39,000 addresses received OP_RETURN messages – Bitcoin’s location used to place a statement – saying that the sender had taken the money.
Galaxy’s investigation revealed that these messages appear to be the basis of the legal abandonment decision. That report he won The Best Crypto Research of 2025 from the Association of Cryptocurrency Journalists and Researchers.
Galaxy’s May 2026 audit found funding for the 2025 dust campaign and a 2026 court ordered onchain service to a single Bitcoin address, which Galaxy calls the “Bankroll” address. The company found that 99.6% of 2025 dust transactions were paid for within two hops from that address, and the same address paid for the 2026 service.
Because the defendants are Bitcoin addresses, the court accepted certain services under CPLR § 308(5): each address received a payment of 546-satoshi (about 4 cents) with an OP_RETURN message linking to the website that issued the complaint. Galaxy confirmed 98 batches across Bitcoin blocks 950,446 to 950,576, reaching a total of 39,069 addresses between May 21-22, 2026.
Whether this constitutes legally sufficient information is an open question. The Onchain service has a long history in the Ethereum ecosystem, where wallets are based on accounts and tokens fall into addresses often found in wallet software.
Bitcoin works differently – wallets are built around unused assets, and most Bitcoin applications don’t show OP_RETURN for payments at all. Most wallets filter incoming spam by default.
What success can mean – and what it can’t mean
Crypto legal watchers all companies agree that even a complete victory for the plaintiff would not allow Nowa Doe to move a single penny. Without the private keys, the court announcement does not provide access to the Bitcoin network. This policy does not accept court orders; it is the only valid signature that moves BTC.
The implications, as Galaxy and legal commentators have pointed out, are different. The court’s declaration can work as a “cloud on the head” – a legal document that the plaintiffs can give to the exchange or investors if the mentioned money appears on the central site.
This can lead to the freezing of assets and force owners to appear and prove their ownership, possibly on the basis of anonymity. It is precisely this power over intermediaries, rather than direct expropriation, that gives the case its importance.
Because the defendants are anonymous addresses that will not appear in court, the technical failure is possible at the end of June 2026, about 30 days after the service. A default judgment can be enforced.
The court will retain discretion to hold a hearing before issuing a declaration of liability, and legal observers see the novelty of the theory and the breadth of its claims as factors that warrant judicial review.
