https://www.binance.com/en/square/post/327042078140002"A lawsuit in New York was filed on May 1, 2026, by plaintiff Noah Doe who seeks to establish legal ownership of 39,069 long-dormant Bitcoin wallet addresses. The complaint cites Section 7-b of New York's personal property law, stating that these wallets have become 'abandoned' property due to security vulnerabilities that prevented the original owners from accessing their funds. Doe claims he discovered these wallets in October 2024 and developed an algorithm to identify wallets that meet the criteria for abandonment. He reported this to the NYPD and spent a year searching for the original owners. The lawsuit requests that the court confirm Doe and his two assignee companies (ABC Corp and XYZ Corp) as the legitimate owners of these wallets and their contents. On December 1, 2025, Doe transferred ownership of all but 18 wallets to ABC Corp, which then transferred 17.7% of the rights to XYZ Corp. According to estimates from the founder of blockchain analytics platform Timechain Index, the total holding in these wallets is approximately 3.7 million Bitcoins, worth about $285 billion at current prices."
AI:
"Noah Doe developed an algorithm for finding Bitcoin addresses that hadn't been touched in a while. The sample included addresses that had been dormant for at least five years, didn't look like exchange wallets, and showed no activity even during BTC's strong rally.
➠ In total, he found approximately 42,000 inactive addresses. He saved their data to USB drives and submitted them to the 17th Precinct of the NYPD as "lost property."
➠ He then began the process of notifying owners: through a public campaign and on-chain messages using OP_RETURN.
➠ According to the plaintiff, some owners did respond: 424 addresses performed an on-chain action to demonstrate that the wallets were not abandoned. Other addresses were excluded for other reasons. However, 39,069 addresses, according to Noah Doe, remain unclaimed.
➠ Now he's citing New York's lost and found property law. The logic is simple: if someone finds property, reports the information to the police, the time limit for tracing the owner has passed, and the owner hasn't come forward, then the finder can claim the property.
The key point: Noah Doe didn't find the private keys. Even if the court upholds his rights to these wallets, he won't be able to withdraw the 3.8 million BTC."
New Craig Wright
