Judge pauses lawsuit over 39,069 dormant Bitcoin wallets

A New York judge temporarily halted a lawsuit that seeks ownership of 39,069 dormant Bitcoin wallets. Justice Kathy J. King signed the stay on June 4 and scheduled a hearing for July 14. The order prevents the anonymous plaintiffs from obtaining control of the addresses while the court reviews competing legal arguments.

The case was filed in March by a plaintiff using the name Noah Doe and two companies. The plaintiffs expanded the complaint on May 1 to cover 39,069 wallets and rely on New York’s lost-and-found statute, which allows a finder to take possession of property if the owner does not claim it. The complaint describes the listed addresses as abandoned and an unnamed expert for the plaintiffs valued each wallet at under $10.

A researcher countered that the listed wallets hold far more value. The addresses are estimated to contain about 3.8 million BTC, roughly $235 billion at current prices, and the average wallet on the plaintiffs’ list contains about 97.25 BTC, roughly $6 million.

Some addresses are linked to high-profile events. One defendant wallet is tied to about 79,957 BTC associated with the 2011 Mt. Gox hack; a repayment process for Mt. Gox creditors is ongoing in Japan. The researcher also identified about 21,900 addresses it associates with early Bitcoin activity, totaling about 1.1 million BTC, and noted many of those addresses use older cryptographic methods that may be vulnerable to future quantum threats.

The temporary stay followed a motion by New York lawyer Ian R. Cohen to file a friend-of-the-court brief opposing the plaintiffs. Cohen, who owns bitcoin, argues the lost-and-found law applies to physical items someone can pick up and not to digital assets secured by private keys. He wrote in his proposed brief: “A wallet that has been dormant for ten years, whose private key is stored on a steel plate in a bank vault, is not abandoned property. It is securely held property.” He also argued that bitcoin exists on a public blockchain and cited a 2022 state law that directs unclaimed digital assets to state custody.

On-chain activity has added to the dispute. After public blockchain notices about the litigation were posted in 2025, 339 wallets on the plaintiffs’ list moved coins. The plaintiffs have until July 7 to respond to Cohen’s filings. The July 14 hearing will decide whether the court will allow his brief and whether the stay will remain in place.

New York courts have not previously applied the state’s lost-and-found statute to cryptocurrencies. The stay prevents any immediate transfer of control while the court considers whether private parties can claim dormant wallets under a statute written for physical property and whether other claims, including those tied to Mt. Gox repayments and state custody rules, must be resolved.