Someone who owns one of those ancient Bitcoin wallets is fighting back. A pseudonymous defendant calling themselves “John Doe 33” filed a motion to dismiss a New York lawsuit that’s trying to claim ownership of 39,069 dormant Bitcoin addresses.
The lawsuit, filed back in May by “Noah Doe” and two Wyoming LLCs, argues the Bitcoin in those wallets is abandoned property. They say they reported it to the NYPD and want to claim it under New York’s lost-property law.
The defendant’s legal team isn’t having it. Their motion says you can’t sue a Bitcoin address — it’s just a string of data, not a person or legal entity. They also point out that a public address was never “lost” in the traditional sense. It’s been sitting on the blockchain, visible to everyone, the whole time.
Blockchain data suggests John Doe 33 controls a wallet holding 5,000 BTC received in April 2014. That’s over $300 million at current prices, and it’s been untouched for more than 12 years. Galaxy Digital’s head of research Alex Thorn called it “a real holder with real standing choosing to fight.”
The wallets in question collectively hold roughly 3.7 million BTC — about $234 billion — and include addresses tied to Satoshi Nakamoto and the Mt. Gox hacker. So the stakes are pretty high.
There’s a practical problem here too. Even if the plaintiffs win, how do they recover Bitcoin without the private keys? You can’t just seize a blockchain address. The defendant’s filing may have also stopped what would’ve been a near-certain default judgment.
There are currently 3.5 million BTC that haven’t moved in a decade, and another 6.6 million that’ve been dormant for five years. This case could set some interesting precedent for who actually owns long-dormant crypto.
