Attorney Ian Cohen filed a rebuttal on June 19 opposing efforts to lift a court stay in a New York lawsuit targeting 39,069 Bitcoin addresses holding roughly 3.8 million BTC, including wallets linked to Satoshi Nakamoto. A hearing is set for July 14.
A Bitcoin self-custody holder and New York attorney is fighting back against a lawsuit that wants a court to declare roughly 3.8 million Bitcoin legally ownerless.
Key takeaways
Ian R. Cohen, a New York M&A attorney and Bitcoin self-custody holder at IRC Legal Advisors, filed a rebuttal on June 19 opposing plaintiffs' counsel David D. Lin's motion to lift a court-ordered stay in ABC Company, XYZ Company, and Noah Doe v. John Does 1-39,069 (NYSCEF Index No. 153119/2026), per a June 20 X thread by Galaxy Digital Head of Firmwide Research Alex Thorn. A hearing on Cohen's amicus application is set for July 14 at 10:30 a.m., Part 6, 60 Centre Street.
The lawsuit, filed March 11, 2026, and expanded May 1 to cover 39,069 Bitcoin addresses, claims those wallets should be treated as abandoned property under New York law and transferred to anonymous plaintiffs who say they "found" them. The address list includes wallets carrying the Patoshi nonce pattern associated with Satoshi Nakamoto's early mining (approximately 21,923 addresses holding an estimated 1.096 million BTC, per Galaxy Research) and the "1Feex" address linked by blockchain researchers to the 2011 Mt. Gox hack, which holds roughly 80,000 BTC.
The plaintiffs' theory runs like this: the original owners can no longer access the funds due to an alleged technical flaw; therefore the coins are abandoned; therefore a court can transfer legal title. Anonymous plaintiff "Noah Doe" claims to have developed a proprietary algorithm to identify these wallets and delivered address lists on USB drives to the NYPD's 17th Precinct between December 2024 and April 2025.
Cohen's original May 29 amicus brief (NYSCEF Doc. No. 33) put it plainly: "Mere inactivity, no matter how prolonged, is not abandonment." His filing argues that New York's lost-property statute was designed for tangible physical objects, that private keys have no cognizable legal situs in New York, and that the 39,069 defendants are pseudonymous addresses, not identifiable individuals who would appear in court to contest the claim.
New York Supreme Court Justice Kathy J. King agreed the matter warranted a pause, issuing a stay on June 5 after reviewing Cohen's arguments. The June 19 rebuttal directly contests Lin's framing that the stay was something Cohen maneuvered rather than something the court independently exercised its authority to grant.
The analysis that matters for Bitcoin holders is not whether this particular suit survives July 14. It is what happens if the underlying theory is ever left unopposed on the record.
The properties that make self-custody Bitcoin most sound (coins that hold indefinitely with no required engagement and no counterparty) are being characterized in court as evidence of abandonment. If that framing gains any judicial traction, the logical extension is mechanical: scan the public ledger, identify long-dormant UTXOs, dispatch dust transactions as "notice," wait out a response window, and petition for legal title. The keys still exist and the coins cannot actually be moved, but a court judgment clouds title, creates inheritance and tax liability, and opens a path for states to direct "abandoned" crypto to the comptroller under New York's 2022 Abandoned Property Law amendment. That is a confiscation vector that requires no cryptographic break.
Galaxy Digital's Thorn framed the stakes in an earlier assessment: "It would be extraordinary for a New York court to hand three anonymous parties legal title to roughly $293 billion worth of BTC, including the coins most closely associated with Satoshi Nakamoto, on a lost-and-found theory propped up by a questionable under-$10 valuation."
Cohen also raised a jurisdictional argument the rest of the case filings largely bury: Bitcoin has no cognizable legal situs in New York. If Justice King accepts that argument, the case ends on cleaner ground than winning on abandonment doctrine alone, without any precedent touching the substance of the lost-property theory.
The wallets are answering for themselves. Galaxy Research confirmed that multiple defendant addresses have moved Bitcoin since the lawsuit was filed, including coins dormant since 2011 and 2019. Thorn noted on June 6: "More 2011 coins that were claimed as 'lost' in the 'noah doe' NY state lost-and-found case are awakening and moving onchain."
The falsifiable line is straightforward. If Justice King denies the lost-property theory on July 14 and rules that New York Personal Property Law Article 7-B cannot apply to blockchain addresses, this case becomes an isolated misadventure. If the stay is lifted and the plaintiffs move toward a default judgment on an unopposed record, every future plaintiff, including a well-resourced state actor, inherits that record as a foundation to build on.
Cohen's continued participation as amicus is the only adversarial check currently in place. Whether the court formally accepts his amicus application at the July 14 hearing will determine whether there is any defense on the record at all.
No court can compel cryptographic action it doesn't control. A judgment granting "legal title" would be a paper claim against addresses whose keys the court cannot access. The practical harm is downstream: clouded title complicates inheritance, creates tax exposure, and gives a state comptroller a legal hook to assert a claim over the address even without the ability to spend the BTC.
Article 7-B is New York's lost-property statute, the legal framework plaintiffs are invoking to argue abandoned wallets can be claimed by a "finder" and ultimately directed to the state. A 2022 amendment extended its scope to dormant cryptocurrency. Cohen's brief argues the statute was written for tangible physical objects and does not translate to self-custodied Bitcoin, where "loss" of a private key by the original holder is not the same as abandonment.
If the court rejects Cohen's participation and lifts the stay, the plaintiffs could move toward a default judgment, since the 39,069 pseudonymous address "defendants" cannot appear in court to contest the claim. A default judgment, even if practically unenforceable against Bitcoin that cannot be moved without keys, would create a judicial record that dormancy can be framed as abandonment under New York law. That record is what a future, better-resourced plaintiff would cite.
