[Omniscient]

https://static1.squarespace.com/static/6...plaint.pdf


Who has heard about this? I've started to read the lawsuit. It's 900 pages, certainly won't read it all.

But holy crap is this insane. A guy in NY wants the courts to name him owner of 37,000 digital wallets as "abandoned". He does not have the keys to the wallets either. He's simply saying that these wallets are inactive and after a certain time are considered abandoned and he wants to own them.

We need to pay attention to shit like this.

Why you ask?

I can imagine a scenario where this clown gets ownership of your holdings which you had in Cold Storage for safety for years. Then one day BTC is $1m+ and you move the funds into a CEX for fiat conversion. But then because of this lawsuit the funds are listed as Stolen (open blockchain ledger flaw). Now your funds are legally his and you're a thief. Your money is gone and you might face charges. The exchange probably closes your account too.

Is the State of NY actually going to allow this and who is going to oppose it? You can kiss holding goodbye if this guy wins. How the heck do we even know the list of addresses?

The more I type the more annoyed I am by this.

EDIT: Oh most of the 900 pages is actual addresses. So it's really just 12 page read then all addresses. So I did read it all. Scary as fuck imho.

[loadman]

https://static1.squarespace.com/static/6...plaint.pdf


Who has heard about this? I've started to read the lawsuit. It's 900 pages, certainly won't read it all.

But holy crap is this insane. A guy in NY wants the courts to name him owner of 37,000 digital wallets as "abandoned". He does not have the keys to the wallets either. He's simply saying that these wallets are inactive and after a certain time are considered abandoned and he wants to own them.

We need to pay attention to shit like this.

Why you ask?

I can imagine a scenario where this clown gets ownership of your holdings which you had in Cold Storage for safety for years. Then one day BTC is $1m+ and you move the funds into a CEX for fiat conversion. But then because of this lawsuit the funds are listed as Stolen (open blockchain ledger flaw). Now your funds are legally his and you're a thief. Your money is gone and you might face charges. The exchange probably closes your account too.

Is the State of NY actually going to allow this and who is going to oppose it? You can kiss holding goodbye if this guy wins. How the heck do we even know the list of addresses?

The more I type the more annoyed I am by this.

if u are not using ur bytes can i get that 5k bytes of urs ?

🔐 loading encrypted image…

[Omniscient]

Oh WTF, the first address I check is #5 12ib7dApVFvg82TXKycWBNpN8kFyiAN1dr

🔐 loading encrypted image…

Do you see it has 31,000 BTC in it? Look at transaction history.

https://blockchair.com/bitcoin/address/1...pp-gallery


WTF!

#1 address 1FeexV6bAHb8ybZjqQMjJrcCrHGW9sb6uF 80,000 BTC What is going on here?

#43 https://blockchair.com/bitcoin/address/1...fvgZmzchjn 5000 BTC

WTF!

Oh no. This is panic time. Something is up.

[loadman]

Oh WTF, the first address I check is #5 12ib7dApVFvg82TXKycWBNpN8kFyiAN1dr

🔐 loading encrypted image…

Do you see it has 31,000 BTC in it? Look at transaction history.

https://blockchair.com/bitcoin/address/1...pp-gallery


WTF!

#1 address 1FeexV6bAHb8ybZjqQMjJrcCrHGW9sb6uF 80,000 BTC What is going on here?

#43 https://blockchair.com/bitcoin/address/1...fvgZmzchjn 5000 BTC

WTF!

Oh no. This is panic time. Something is up.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comment...are_button

10 yrs old

[Omniscient]

All the addresses seem to have these low 40 cent transaction that are recent. How are they claiming the wallets are "abandoned" if they are still active?

Address #1 btw is Mt Gox. This is getting even more crazy as I research it.

AI Quote: I think the lawsuit faces very serious legal obstacles.

Not impossible, but uphill.

The biggest problems I see are:

1. They likely do not possess the property
The complaint appears to concede they do not have the private keys.

In crypto, the private key is essentially control.

Without it:
they cannot move the coins,
cannot exclude others, and cannot actually exercise dominion over the assets.

Courts may view this as:

> “You found public information about wallets, not the property itself.”

That is probably the core weakness.

2. Public blockchain addresses are not hidden objects
These addresses already exist publicly on-chain.

Anyone can:

observe them, index them,
copy them, analyze them.

So a judge may ask:

> How can you “find” something already publicly visible to the entire world?

That’s very different from finding:

a lost watch, a bag of cash,
or a forgotten hardware wallet.

3. Abandonment law usually requires intent
Under property law, abandonment generally requires:
relinquishment of possession,
AND intent to abandon ownership.

Simply not moving Bitcoin for years may not prove intent.

Especially because:
long-term cold storage is common in crypto,
dead wallets exist, forgotten wallets exist,
inheritance issues exist, and some holders intentionally never transact.

4. Mt. Gox-linked addresses are a huge complication
The fact that the exhibit includes the famous Mt. Gox-linked address is significant.

That suggests:

some wallets may be associated with known theft victims, disputed ownership,
or criminal proceeds.

Courts are usually reluctant to grant clean title over potentially stolen property.

5. The lawsuit may be trying to create law
This feels partly strategic:
pushing a novel legal theory,
hoping for a declaratory judgment, or trying to establish precedent for blockchain abandonment claims.

Sometimes lawsuits are filed because:

the plaintiff thinks they have a real shot, OR because even partial recognition would be valuable.

6. One thing they did smartly
They appear to have carefully built a record:

NYPD filings, notices,
media publication, blockchain messaging,
expert opinions, formal abandonment procedures.

That suggests this was not casually thrown together.

But even with all that, the leap from:

> “I identified dormant public addresses”
> to
> “I now own the wallets and contents”

is very large.

My guess:

They may succeed on some procedural points. They may get attention and possibly settlement leverage in some edge cases.
But getting a broad ruling declaring ownership of billions in dormant crypto wallets seems difficult.

Especially because courts tend to be cautious when:
property rights are uncertain,
technology is novel,
* and granting ownership could affect enormous sums.

[Omniscient]

Oh snap, just had a thought.

What if the lawsuit is tied to Mark Karpelès of Mt Gox who actually does have the keys? And this is his legal attempt to regain the wealth through a shell company so that he's not sued or arrested by authorities?

[SUI-3183372]

The same people fueling the case in the OP are also behind this event: https://hackforums.net/showthread.php?tid=6302602

The 2025 event was likely misunderstood at the time, I'd like to find some time to revisit it to see if funds even actually moved or if something else occurred, but the event acts as a precursor to the lawsuit we see today.

Yep...
Spoiler (Click to View)

AI Quote: Yeah, let me actually check. I've got enough full or near-full addresses from the screenshots to look them up on a block explorer.Bingo — answer found in one search. Let me verify with another address to be sure.Let me check one more to be triple-sure.Confirmed — the funds did not move. The article was wrong (or at least very misleading).

Hard data on 1BAFWQhH9pNkz3mZDQ1tWrtKkSHVCkc3fV (one of the 8 wallets the article claimed moved 10K BTC):

This address has transacted 43 times on the Bitcoin blockchain. It has received a total of 10,000.07741876 BTC ($231,647,093.37) and has sent a total of 0.00000000 BTC ($0.00). The current value of this address is 10,000.07741876 BTC

Total sent: zero. 43 transactions, every single one inbound. The 10,000 BTC is still sitting there right now. The 43 transactions on a "dormant" wallet are exactly what you'd expect from a dust-spam notice campaign: someone sending tiny amounts + OP_RETURN data blobs to the address over and over.

So what the cyphertux article called "10K BTC moved from 1BAFWQ... to bc1q84w6..." was actually the inverse: bc1q84w6... (or another funding wallet controlled by whoever was doing the tagging) sent a tiny amount to 1BAFWQ... with an OP_RETURN message attached. The "10K BTC $1.08B" column the article author was looking at was the dormant wallet's balance for context, not a transfer amount. Classic block-explorer screenshot misread.

There was a real ~80K BTC movement around that time — but from different wallets.

There was a rare occurrence on July 5, 2025. A crypto wallet from the early 2010s, previously believed to be dormant, has come to life. This wallet, untouched for over 14 years, moved 80,000 BTC, worth just over $8.6 billion at June 2025 prices. The phenomenon even has a name among crypto sleuths: the Sleeping Beauty Bitcoin wallet.

That "Sleeping Beauty" event was real and widely covered — but it's a separate story from the OP_RETURN-tagged wallets in the cyphertux article. The article author appears to have collided two news threads happening the same week:

1. The real story: A separate set of Satoshi-era wallets (the "Sleeping Beauty" event) actually moved ~80K BTC around July 5, 2025. Owner reasserted control after 14 years dormant. Cause never publicly confirmed.
2. The Salomon Brothers tagging campaign: Noah Doe / Salomon Brothers ran an OP_RETURN dust-spam notice operation June 30–July 10, 2025, sending legal notices to thousands of dormant addresses they were planning to claim. The 8 addresses screenshotted in the article were targets of that campaign, not the wallets that actually moved.

The author treated the OP_RETURN messages as if they were attached to the 80K BTC movement, building a "cryptographic breakthrough" narrative on top. In reality, the 80K BTC movers and the OP_RETURN-tagged wallets were two different sets, and the OP_RETURN-tagged wallets still hold every satoshi they had in 2011.

This actually strengthens the "Noah Doe is making a paper-only claim with no keys" read of the lawsuit. If he had any cryptographic ability to access these wallets, the simplest move would be to just take the coins. He's not — the coins are still sitting there, untouched, waiting for either the real owner to show up or a default judgment to hand him a paper title to BTC he can never spend.

[Omniscient]

So they are using these Dust txns as their notice? I'm so floored by this nonsense. This is an attack on Bitcoin holders. They get away with this, they'll go after more addresses where we hold. And I have a really bad feeling that nobody is going to oppose this nonsense.

As much as a Bitcoin Maxi I might be, I'm leaning more and more towards Monero being the best blockchain for privacy. They couldn't do this with Monero, they can't list addresses or balances.

Unbelievable events are taking place. They are imho, about to steal billions worth of Bitcoin. With the 40k addresses, it could be funds from anyone. I'm going to have to bring up my cold wallet and check the addresses I have. Probably move funds to a new wallet too.

[SUI-3183372]

So they are using these Dust txns as their notice? I'm so floored by this nonsense. This is an attack on Bitcoin holders. They get away with this, they'll go after more addresses where we hold. And I have a really bad feeling that nobody is going to oppose this nonsense.

As much as a Bitcoin Maxi I might be, I'm leaning more and more towards Monero being the best blockchain for privacy. They couldn't do this with Monero, they can't list addresses or balances.

Unbelievable events are taking place. They are imho, about to steal billions worth of Bitcoin. With the 40k addresses, it could be funds from anyone. I'm going to have to bring up my cold wallet and check the addresses I have. Probably move funds to a new wallet too.

Yes, these transactions are their notice. They dusted 42,000 wallet and, interestingly, 2,932 wallets responded and self-identified as not abandoned.

The total sum that they're targeting amounts to 3.7m BTC, or roughly 17.7% of all of the BTC that will ever exist. This includes mt gox addresses, satoshi addresses, and other significant historical addresses.

I don't think any aspect of this works, however.
1. Did this guy actually find anything? If I print out pages from a phone book and turn them into the NYPD, can I begin making claims at seldom used phone numbers? Submitting a USB drive of public addresses to NYPD is not the same as turning in a wallet found on a park bench, he lacks possession.
2. Is being dormant the same thing as being abandoned? And if yes, is 5 years a long enough threshold?
3. Is an OP_RETURN message in the wallet adequate notice? (Candidly, I think yes, but this hasn't been clearly established yet)
4. Does a New York court, or even a Federal court, even have jurisdiction? And if the answer is somehow yes, why are we not going through New York's claimed property process, why are we inventing a new process here?
5. What does ownership even mean here? Nobody involved here holds the keys, say the stars align and he's granted ownership. Now what?

I think point 5 is the most important here. If somehow everything works out and he's granted ownership of any number of these 3.7m BTC that he's gunning for, how does he claim ownership? In reality, he doesn't, it's theatrics. The Bitcoin protocol has no obligation to comply. It has no personhood, no New York presence, and no obligation to recognize court orders. He gets a piece of paper that nobody else in the world cares about or recognizes. There are two paths forward:

1. A court then tries to compel core developers to introduce code that reassigns these coins/wallets to the suit filer. Guess what happens the moment that occurs? We experience a fork, and the chain with the backdoor becomes the minority chain in this fork. Nobody uses it.
2. He partners with a recovery firm or some entity with quantum aspirations, and he offers them a cut of the coins he has "legal claim to" if they can obtain possession of any of these wallets.

I think what he hopes to do is pick up some sort of victory in court, then announce that he has legal claim to 17% of the Bitcoin supply. He tokenizes this claim and sells portions of it at a discount. "Buy a share of this claim for pennies on the dollar". People buy in hoping it becomes a reality and they receive a portion of the claim.

I don't think in any world does any of this actually work for mr law suit.

[Omniscient]

Yes, these transactions are their notice. They dusted 42,000 wallet and, interestingly, 2,932 wallets responded and self-identified as not abandoned.

The total sum that they're targeting amounts to 3.7m BTC, or roughly 17.7% of all of the BTC that will ever exist. This includes mt gox addresses, satoshi addresses, and other significant historical addresses.

I don't think any aspect of this works, however.
1. Did this guy actually find anything? If I print out pages from a phone book and turn them into the NYPD, can I begin making claims at seldom used phone numbers? Submitting a USB drive of public addresses to NYPD is not the same as turning in a wallet found on a park bench, he lacks possession.
2. Is being dormant the same thing as being abandoned? And if yes, is 5 years a long enough threshold?
3. Is an OP_RETURN message in the wallet adequate notice? (Candidly, I think yes, but this hasn't been clearly established yet)
4. Does a New York court, or even a Federal court, even have jurisdiction? And if the answer is somehow yes, why are we not going through New York's claimed property process, why are we inventing a new process here?
5. What does ownership even mean here? Nobody involved here holds the keys, say the stars align and he's granted ownership. Now what?

I think point 5 is the most important here. If somehow everything works out and he's granted ownership of any number of these 3.7m BTC that he's gunning for, how does he claim ownership? In reality, he doesn't, it's theatrics. The Bitcoin protocol has no obligation to comply. It has no personhood, no New York presence, and no obligation to recognize court orders. He gets a piece of paper that nobody else in the world cares about or recognizes. There are two paths forward:

1. A court then tries to compel core developers to introduce code that reassigns these coins/wallets to the suit filer. Guess what happens the moment that occurs? We experience a fork, and the chain with the backdoor becomes the minority chain in this fork. Nobody uses it.
2. He partners with a recovery firm or some entity with quantum aspirations, and he offers them a cut of the coins he has "legal claim to" if they can obtain possession of any of these wallets.

I think what he hopes to do is pick up some sort of victory in court, then announce that he has legal claim to 17% of the Bitcoin supply. He tokenizes this claim and sells portions of it at a discount. "Buy a share of this claim for pennies on the dollar". People buy in hoping it becomes a reality and they receive a portion of the claim.

I don't think in any world does any of this actually work for mr law suit.

I think you're not viewing this as an attack on the protocol using lawfare. All your arguments are fine but the question is who is going to be the lawyers defending against this lawsuit? They'll be NY lawyers, that's who. For all we know, they'll just allow the ownership transfer and agree that it's abandoned property which will set off a drastic decline in BTC value simply from headlines.

And if you think forking will matter, not to the law, they'll say the forks are owned by him too. That they are derivatives. Honestly, it's dumb lawfare like this which can ruin Bitcoin forever. Even without keys or control, it sets a precedence that's very dangerous.

[SUI-3183372]

I think you're not viewing this as an attack on the protocol using lawfare. All your arguments are fine but the question is who is going to be the lawyers defending against this lawsuit? They'll be NY lawyers, that's who. For all we know, they'll just allow the ownership transfer and agree that it's abandoned property which will set off a drastic decline in BTC value simply from headlines.

And if you think forking will matter, not to the law, they'll say the forks are owned by him too. That they are derivatives. Honestly, it's dumb lawfare like this which can ruin Bitcoin forever. Even without keys or control, it sets a precedence that's very dangerous.

The lawfare angle is a valid concern, it'll generate headlines that damage Bitcoin's reputation, but I think that's the only risk here, reputational harm in headlines. We won't experience a degradation of the protocol.

"They'll just allow the ownership transfer". Sure, on paper. How do they enforce this? I see this as no more than theatrics, there's no path forward where ownership of these funds actually transfers and Bitcoin doesn't fork away from it.

I disagree with the fork response too. A fork isn't a derivative, it's a separate ledger run by individuals and entities not before the court. NY has no jurisdiction over the nodes, miners, or devs who'd actually decide which chain wins. He'd need to sue every one 50.1% of them individually in their home jurisdictions to enforce, which is pretty much impossible.

We've been here before, every time someone tries to assert external legal control over Bitcoin's consensus, we simply route around them. The OFAC attacks were much scarier than this.

[Omniscient]

The lawfare angle is a valid concern, it'll generate headlines that damage Bitcoin's reputation, but I think that's the only risk here, reputational harm in headlines. We won't experience a degradation of the protocol.

"They'll just allow the ownership transfer". Sure, on paper. How do they enforce this? I see this as no more than theatrics, there's no path forward where ownership of these funds actually transfers.

I disagree with the fork response too. A fork isn't a derivative, it's a separate ledger run by individuals and entities not before the court. NY has no jurisdiction over the nodes, miners, or devs who'd actually decide which chain wins. He'd need to sue every one 50.1% of them individually in their home jurisdictions to enforce, which is pretty much impossible.

We've been here before, every time someone tries to assert external legal control over Bitcoin's consensus, we simply route around them. The OFAC attacks were much scarier than this.

But their argument would be same keys for older addresses making it the same property. I'm not agreeing with the argument, I'm just foreseeing the types of arguments they'll use.

And it's not about degradation to the protocol. It's about destroying the value and perception that it's money. And on-paper they enforce this by seizing wallets when used on KYC exchanges. The AML Risk Scores already flag "stolen" Bitcoin. Every single one of those addresses in the lawsuit will likely get a SEVERE risk assessment resulting in seizure.

Even if just 5% of those Bitcoins get into KYC exchanges in the next 5-10 years it's a huge amount of money for whoever this anonymous person is.

Also at the same time you have this nonsense going on in EU...

From my perspective none of this is looking good for crypto. It's being controlled by governments step by step. And in the meantime valuations are stagnant and most alts are down heavy. While fiat is being printed like crazy too. This is the result of inviting regulation into the space. IMHO Crypto didn't need it to get this far and eventually it's going to destroy it.

Governments are not there to protect citizens. They exist to control outcomes.

[trashy]

But their argument would be same keys for older addresses making it the same property. I'm not agreeing with the argument, I'm just foreseeing the types of arguments they'll use.

And it's not about degradation to the protocol. It's about destroying the value and perception that it's money. And on-paper they enforce this by seizing wallets when used on KYC exchanges. The AML Risk Scores already flag "stolen" Bitcoin. Every single one of those addresses in the lawsuit will likely get a SEVERE risk assessment resulting in seizure.

Even if just 5% of those Bitcoins get into KYC exchanges in the next 5-10 years it's a huge amount of money for whoever this anonymous person is.

Also at the same time you have this nonsense going on in EU...

From my perspective none of this is looking good for crypto. It's being controlled by governments step by step. And in the meantime valuations are stagnant and most alts are down heavy. While fiat is being printed like crazy too. This is the result of inviting regulation into the space. IMHO Crypto didn't need it to get this far and eventually it's going to destroy it.

Governments are not there to protect citizens. They exist to control outcomes.

I lived dumb laws by myself with all the Spanish government banning Cloudflare for no reason.

Sadly, we'll be seeing more and more EU nonsense stuff against crypto, especially when they implement the "Digital Euro" they are announcing since some years.

Some people working at the EU administration claim this is the solution or the "good alternative" to blockchain. So bye to stablecoins again if they want to force this. In case u guys wanna know about this project: https://www.ecb.europa.eu/euro/digital_e...ex.en.html

[Omniscient]

I lived dumb laws by myself with all the Spanish government banning Cloudflare for no reason.

Sadly, we'll be seeing more and more EU nonsense stuff against crypto, especially when they implement the "Digital Euro" they are announcing since some years.

Some people working at the EU administration claim this is the solution or the "good alternative" to blockchain. So bye to stablecoins again if they want to force this. In case u guys wanna know about this project: https://www.ecb.europa.eu/euro/digital_e...ex.en.html

Well aware of CBDC actions in EU. I think by end of year you'll be deep in it.

[trashy]

Well aware of CBDC actions in EU. I think by end of year you'll be deep in it.

Okay that's sad to hear. But thanks for letting me know, will look more into it so it doesn't take me by surprise haha.