A defendant known only as John Doe Thirty-Three has filed to dismiss a New York lawsuit claiming ownership of 39,069 dormant Bitcoin wallet addresses. The case, filed in May by a claimant under the name Noah Doe and two Wyoming limited liability companies, argues that these wallets meet the test for abandoned property and could therefore be awarded to someone else under New York’s lost-property laws.
What makes this unusual isn’t just the number of wallets. It’s the legal theory. The plaintiffs say they identified thousands of inactive addresses, reported them to police, and gave public notice to any potential owner. John Doe Thirty-Three’s new filing directly challenges that.
The motion argues that Bitcoin addresses are just data strings visible on a blockchain, not the kind of property that can be simply found and claimed if left untouched. That goes straight to a fundamental tension: can inactivity on a blockchain ever mean the wallet was abandoned?
The case also exposes a real evidentiary problem. Courts can see a wallet’s address but not its private key, which is the actual proof of practical control. If a claimant cannot show key control, and the true owner appears under a pseudonym, that raises a basic question about what counts as proof of ownership in court.