Motion to Dismiss Filed in Bitcoin Wallet Ownership Case Targeting 39,069 Addresses
In a New York lawsuit targeting $229 billion in Bitcoin believed to be lost, a defendant controlling a dormant wallet has submitted a motion to dismiss the case.
An anonymous defendant has submitted a motion to dismiss a legal action in New York that attempts to claim ownership of 39,069 inactive Bitcoin addresses, contending that Bitcoin addresses are simply strings of data incapable of being named as defendants in litigation.
The individual, who goes by the pseudonym "John Doe 33," submitted both a notice of appearance and a dismissal motion on Thursday, asserting they maintain control over one of the inactive wallets identified in the legal complaint.
The motion contends that the lawsuit contains fundamental legal flaws because Bitcoin address strings qualify neither as persons nor as legal entities that fall under the court's jurisdictional authority. The submission maintains that a public Bitcoin address cannot be considered "found" according to New York's abandoned property statutes since it has remained continuously visible on the blockchain ledger.
The submission contests the legal action brought in May by a plaintiff using the name "Noah Doe" along with two limited liability companies based in Wyoming, identified as ABC Company and XYZ Company. The parties bringing the suit assert that the Bitcoin linked to the enumerated addresses represents abandoned property which they reported to the New York Police Department and attempted to claim pursuant to New York's lost-property statutes.
Irrespective of the court's eventual determination regarding ownership rights, questions persist about how the plaintiffs would be able to retrieve any Bitcoin in the absence of the private keys required to gain access to the wallets.
The legal complaint enumerates 39,069 Bitcoin addresses, among them wallet addresses commonly attributed to Bitcoin's creator Satoshi Nakamoto as well as the individual responsible for the Mt. Gox hack. The enumerated wallets contain a combined total of approximately 3.7 million BTC (valued at roughly $234 billion), as reported by Sani, who founded the Bitcoin analytics platform Timechain Index.
Defendant appears to control $300 million Bitcoin wallet
Analysis of blockchain data indicates that "John Doe 33" maintains control over a wallet containing 5,000 BTC that was received in April 2014 and has not been moved for more than 12 years, giving it a current value exceeding $300 million based on present market prices, as noted in a Friday post on X by Alex Thorn, head of research at Galaxy Digital.
That's ~100x the median defendant address. This is a real holder with real standing choosing to fight, not a bystander.
Thorn further noted that the submission thwarted what would have been a "near-certain" judgment by default and raised questions about jurisdictional issues and statutory problems within the plaintiffs' legal case.
At present, there exist 3.5 million BTC, valued at approximately $215 billion, that have remained inactive for the previous 10 years and an additional 6.6 million coins, valued at roughly $406 billion, that have stayed dormant for more than five years, according to statistics from Bitbo.