A New York man identified in court documents only as Noah Doe has filed a 
lawsuit in the Supreme Court of the State of New York seeking legal ownership 
of 39,069 abandoned Bitcoin wallets — assets he discovered using a self- 
developed algorithm, reported to the NYPD in compliance with lost and found 
property law, and spent over a year attempting to return to their rightful 
owners before filing suit. Related Reading: American Mega Bank Is Dumping Its 
Ethereum Holdings, Here’s What It’s Buying The First Amended Complaint, filed 
May 1, 2026, under index number 153119/2026 and filed through Brooklyn-based 
law firm Lewis &amp; Lin LLC, lays out one of the most unusual property cases in 
crypto&#8217;s short legal history. Noah Doe is not a hacker. He is not a thief. 
Under New York Personal Property Law Article 7-B, he is arguing he is a finder 
— and that title to the abandoned wallets vested in him by operation of law 
after all reasonable efforts to locate their owners failed. How He Found The 
Bitcoin The story begins in October 2024, when Noah Doe identified what the 
complaint describes as a security vulnerability affecting digital wallets — a 
flaw that caused owners to lose their ability to withdraw contents, leading 
them to abandon the Bitcoin wallets entirely. In response, he developed what 
the filing calls &#8220;the Algorithm&#8221; — criteria and methods for identifying 
wallets meeting the legal standard for abandonment: dormant or inactive for at 
least five years, self-custodied rather than held by an exchange, and 
unresponsive through multiple periods of significant cryptocurrency price 
appreciation that any reasonable owner would have acted on. Between December 
26, 2024 and April 14, 2025, Noah Doe ran his Algorithm and identified three 
separate batches of found wallets — 1,544 in December, 546 in March, and 
39,911 in April — all using his personal computer in New York City. Each time, 
within days of discovery, he physically brought a USB drive containing the 
wallet addresses to the NYPD&#8217;s 17th Precinct, where officers issued receipts 
and property invoices, per the complaint. The NYPD took custody of each drive 
before returning them months later. BTC&#8217;s price trends to the upside on the 
daily chart. Source: BTCUSD on Tradingview A Year Of Outreach Before Court 
What followed was an extensive, documented effort to return the wallets to 
their owners — conducted entirely at Noah Doe&#8217;s personal expense, per the 
filing. He engaged an independent expert to assess the wallets&#8217; value — 
concluded at less than $10 at the time of finding given recovery uncertainty — 
a strategic consultant named Salomon Brothers Strategic Advisors Inc., and a 
separate cyber and blockchain expert to independently verify the wallets 
existed on-chain and had been dormant for at least five years. In late June 
2025, the blockchain expert transmitted an OP_RETURN message — a technique 
that inserts a token into a wallet&#8217;s transaction record — to every single 
found wallet, directing holders to an abandonment notice webpage hosted by 
Salomon Brothers. The notice gave holders 90 days, until October 10, 2025, to 
claim ownership. A global press release followed on August 7, reaching an 
estimated 820 media outlets across 37 countries and up to 225 million people 
through direct and secondary impressions, per the complaint. Coverage included 
CoinDesk, Bitcoinist, Yahoo Finance, and Investing.com. Galaxy Digital 
separately circulated a report to its clients on the abandonment notice. Of 
the 42,001 total wallets found, 2,932 were subsequently removed — including 
424 that took on-chain action to demonstrate they had not been abandoned. The 
remaining 39,069 Bitcoin wallets took no action and are the subject of the 
lawsuit. The Legal Question The complaint seeks a declaratory judgment — not 
damages, not criminal prosecution, but a judicial declaration that Noah Doe 
and his two assignee companies, identified as ABC Company and XYZ Company, are 
the legal owners of the 39,069 Abandoned Wallets and their contents under New 
York Personal Property Law. On December 1, 2025, Noah Doe transferred 
ownership rights in all but 18 of the wallets to ABC Company, which 
subsequently transferred 17.7% to XYZ Company. All three plaintiffs are 
parties to the suit. Related Reading: Bitcoin Rally Faces Fresh Test As Demand 
Metric Hits 2026 Low This case marks a pivotal and genuinely unprecedented 
moment for the nascent sector&#8217;s intersection with property law. A New York 
court is now being asked to rule on whether self-custodied Bitcoin wallets — 
dormant for six years or more, found through a proprietary algorithm, reported 
to police, and subjected to a year of documented outreach — constitute lost 
property under existing New York law, and whether their finder can legally 
claim title. The outcome could establish a legal framework with consequences 
far beyond this single case. Cover image from Grok, BTCUSD chart from 
Tradingview

A New York man identified in court documents only as Noah Doe has filed a lawsuit in the Supreme Court of the State of New York seeking legal ownership of 39,069 abandoned Bitcoin wallets — assets he discovered using a self- developed algorithm, reported to the NYPD in compliance with lost and found property law, &#8230;

Nobody Claimed These 39,069 Bitcoin Wallets For Six Years — Now A Court Will Decide Who Owns Them

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Nobody Claimed These 39,069 Bitcoin Wallets For Six Years — Now A Court Will Decide Who Owns Them

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