A Bitcoin whale just walked into a New York courtroom and told the judge that a wallet address is not a lost suitcase.
The lawsuit was audacious. A pseudonymous plaintiff called Noah Doe filed in May claiming 39,069 dormant Bitcoin wallets as abandoned property under New York lost property law. The wallets hold an estimated 3.7 million BTC. Roughly $234 billion. The list includes addresses widely associated with Satoshi Nakamoto and the Mt. Gox hacker. The plaintiffs served the addresses via OP_RETURN messages on the blockchain and waited for nobody to respond. The strategy was built on silence. A default judgment was near certain.
Then John Doe 33 walked in.
He controls a wallet holding 5,000 BTC received in April 2014. Untouched for twelve years. Worth more than $300 million. His motion to dismiss argues that Bitcoin addresses are data strings, not legal entities. A public address cannot be found under lost property law because it has always been publicly visible on the blockchain. His words from the filing, "I am not a bitcoin blockchain address string or digital wallet, a line of source code, or other form of inanimate data."
Alex Thorn called it exactly right. This is a real holder with real standing choosing to fight, not a bystander. The filing prevented what had been a near certain default judgment. Judge Kathy King will hear the case on July 14.
A Bitcoin address is not a wallet. A wallet is not a person. And a person who holds their own keys is not abandoning anything. They are waiting.
What would you do if the court said your Bitcoin was lost because you had not moved it in six years?
The lawsuit was audacious. A pseudonymous plaintiff called Noah Doe filed in May claiming 39,069 dormant Bitcoin wallets as abandoned property under New York lost property law. The wallets hold an estimated 3.7 million BTC. Roughly $234 billion. The list includes addresses widely associated with Satoshi Nakamoto and the Mt. Gox hacker. The plaintiffs served the addresses via OP_RETURN messages on the blockchain and waited for nobody to respond. The strategy was built on silence. A default judgment was near certain.
Then John Doe 33 walked in.
He controls a wallet holding 5,000 BTC received in April 2014. Untouched for twelve years. Worth more than $300 million. His motion to dismiss argues that Bitcoin addresses are data strings, not legal entities. A public address cannot be found under lost property law because it has always been publicly visible on the blockchain. His words from the filing, "I am not a bitcoin blockchain address string or digital wallet, a line of source code, or other form of inanimate data."
Alex Thorn called it exactly right. This is a real holder with real standing choosing to fight, not a bystander. The filing prevented what had been a near certain default judgment. Judge Kathy King will hear the case on July 14.
A Bitcoin address is not a wallet. A wallet is not a person. And a person who holds their own keys is not abandoning anything. They are waiting.
What would you do if the court said your Bitcoin was lost because you had not moved it in six years?
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