A New York lawsuit seeks to claim ownership of 39,000 dormant Bitcoin addresses, involving Satoshi Nakamoto's holdings.

According to a report by Cointelegraph, Noah Doe and two Wyoming LLCs filed a lawsuit in New York on May 1st, seeking a court ruling on their ownership of 39,069 dormant Bitcoin addresses. They are citing New York State lost property law, arguing that the Bitcoin held at these addresses constitutes "abandoned property" in a legal sense. The addresses in question include those beginning with "12c6D" associated with Satoshi Nakamoto and those beginning with "1Feex" associated with the Mt. Gox hack. The founder of the on-chain analytics platform Timechain Index estimates that the listed addresses collectively hold approximately 3.7 million BTC, worth about $285 billion. However, Noveleader, chief research analyst at investment research firm Castle Labs, points out that even if the court rules in favor of the plaintiffs, it will only be symbolic, as the Bitcoin network itself lacks a mechanism for redistributing funds without private keys. Furthermore, the plaintiff sent legal notices to a P2PKH format address, while the BTC in question was actually stored in a P2PK script. The analyst believes this is "structurally flawed" and could render the waiver notification procedure itself invalid.