After fourteen years, Satoshi-era Bitcoin wallets are again at the center of a lawsuit. On July 6, a second amicus brief was filed opposing Noah Doe’s attempt to assert ownership of Satoshi’s coins as abandoned property. The pseudonymous plaintiffs—Noah Doe, ABC Company, and XYZ Company—seek legal ownership of 39,069 dormant Bitcoin wallets they did not create and cannot access. Defendants argue that wallet inactivity alone does not constitute abandonment, as ownership rests on private keys, not transaction history. Recent on-chain activity from a targeted wallet further complicates the case.
The second amicus brief in the Noah Doe case was filed on July 6, opposing the claim that Satoshi-era Bitcoin is abandoned property. The first filing occurred in May 2026 when Salomon Brothers claimed legal ownership of Satoshi’s coins.
The three pseudonymous plaintiffs—Noah Doe, ABC Company, and XYZ Company—are attempting to acquire legal ownership of 39,069 dormant Bitcoin wallets they did not create and cannot access. According to the plaintiffs, they posted notices on the blockchain using Bitcoin’s OP_RETURN function, directing wallet owners to an abandonment notice with 90 days to reply.
After the notice period, approximately 2,900 wallets were deleted, including 424 that were activated, leaving 39,069 that they say were abandoned. However, the plaintiffs acknowledge they lack the private keys required to access the Bitcoin and provide no evidence that the owners saw the notices, using only wallet inactivity as proof of abandonment.
The defendants contend the case should be dismissed, warning that many investors purposefully leave Bitcoin unaltered for years. The filing noted, “Granting the relief Plaintiffs seek would not quiet title, it would disrupt entire industries and the expectations of every owner of digital assets.”
They argue that Noah Doe is ineligible to be a legitimate “finder” since he only discovered public wallet addresses and never acquired the private keys or authority over the Bitcoin. Meanwhile, recent blockchain activity complicated that argument further.
In Bitcoin block 952,104, the wallet with address 1LwWtSs7tMCwcRczQd5kVMv3xpWw6w4Sxe, which had held 35.55 BTC since March 27, 2011, moved 15 BTC to a new address and returned the remaining 20.55 BTC as change. This wallet is one of the 39,069 addresses named as defendants in the lawsuit filed in New York by Noah Doe.
Doe claims the dormant wallets were abandoned and is suing for ownership of approximately 3.8 million BTC under New York law. The 1LwWt wallet was on the final list of defendants after failing to reply to a notice sent on July 31, 2025.
Long-time Bitcoin owners frequently hold their coins in self-custody for years at a time without transacting. Therefore, wallet inactivity by itself does not establish abandonment, as ownership ultimately rests on control of the private keys rather than transaction history.
