A New York judge has temporarily halted a lawsuit claiming ownership of 39,069 dormant Bitcoin (BTC) wallets. The order prevents any quick victory for the anonymous plaintiffs before the court hearing on July 14.
Judge Cathy J. King signed the order on June 4. The wallets contain about 3.8 million bitcoins, worth roughly $235 billion at today’s prices.
What Does the Dormant Bitcoin Wallets Lawsuit Want?
An anonymous plaintiff named Noah Doe and two companies filed the case in March. They expanded it on May 1 to include 39,069 wallets.
They rely on New York’s lost and found law. A finder can keep lost property if it was never claimed by the owner. The courts have never applied it to cryptocurrencies.
Their unnamed expert rated each wallet at under $10. Galaxy research Counters The average wallet listed contains 97.25 bitcoins, which is about $6 million today.
The first defendant’s wallet contained approximately 79,957 bitcoins from the 2011 Mt Gox hack. Payment process in Mount Jux It is still running in Japan, so claims may conflict.
Galaxy also connects about 21,900 listed addresses, with approximately 1.1 million BTC Satoshi Nakamoto wallet activity. Many are sitting Quantum weak Bitcoin addresses.
Why did the judge strike a pause?
the He spends It followed a suggestion made by Ian R. Cohen, a New York lawyer who owns Bitcoin. He requested an amicus curiae brief against the case.
Cohen says the law covers physical objects that a person can pick up and keep. Bitcoin exists on a public blockchain that everyone can see, so it is never lost.
“A wallet that has been dormant for ten years, and whose private key is stored on a steel plate in a bank vault, is not abandoned property. It is securely held property,” Cohen said. books In his proposed summary.
It also indicates the year 2022 law Which sends unclaimed cryptocurrencies to the state, not to their private discoverers.
The on-chain data backs it up. After blockchain notices were issued in 2025, 339 listed wallets transferred coins, echoing other Satoshi era wallet movements.
Plaintiffs have until July 7 to respond. The July 14 hearing will decide whether the issue gets its first real dissenting vote.
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