First Defendant Moves to Dismiss NY Suit Over 39,069 Dormant Bitcoin Wallets

A pseudonymous holder filed to dismiss the Noah Doe abandoned-property claim, challenging the legal theory at its foundation.

Key takeaways

• A holder identifying as John Doe 33 filed a notice of appearance and motion to dismiss on June 30, 2026, becoming the first Bitcoin owner to contest the Noah Doe lawsuit in court over 39,069 dormant wallets holding roughly 3.8 million BTC.
• The motion argues two defects that could end the case before any merits hearing: Bitcoin address strings are not legal persons subject to court jurisdiction, and publicly visible on-chain data cannot qualify as "found" property under New York's lost-property statute.
• Even a successful declaratory judgment for Noah Doe cannot move Bitcoin without the private keys. The real danger is a competing title claim that makes self-custied wallets legally encumbered in the eyes of regulated institutions.

A pseudonymous Bitcoin holder calling himself John Doe 33 filed a notice of appearance and motion to dismiss on June 30, 2026, in New York Supreme Court (NYSCEF Index No. 153119/2026), becoming the first actual owner to contest the Noah Doe lawsuit seeking title over 39,069 dormant wallets. The filing was first reported by CryptoSlate on July 2, 2026.

The wallets named in the suit collectively hold an estimated 3.799 million BTC, including addresses associated with Satoshi Nakamoto (via the Patoshi nonce pattern, roughly 21,923 addresses holding approximately 1.096 million BTC per Galaxy Research) and the address linked by blockchain researchers to the 2011 Mt. Gox hack. Plaintiff Noah Doe, alongside two Wyoming LLCs, claims those wallets represent abandoned property under New York Personal Property Law Article 7-B, which they reported to the NYPD on USB drives and notified via on-chain OP_RETURN messages.

Two Defects at the Core of the Motion

John Doe 33's filing does not just push back on the ownership theory. It attacks the lawsuit's structural foundations before any hearing on the merits.

The first argument: Bitcoin address strings are not persons, natural or legal, and therefore cannot be named as defendants subject to court jurisdiction. The motion states the holder is "a natural person and a real human being" with constitutionally protected property rights, and is not "a Bitcoin blockchain address string, a digital wallet, a line of source code, or any other form of inanimate data." The implication is direct. Noah Doe sued the addresses themselves, not the people who hold them.

The second argument: a publicly visible on-chain address cannot be "found" under Article 7-B. The statute was written for tangible objects physically located and deposited with police. Running an algorithm against a public ledger is not finding property. New York attorney Ian R. Cohen made the same point in his amicus brief filed May 29, 2026 (NYSCEF Doc. No. 33): "Abandonment requires intentional relinquishment of ownership and an external act manifesting that intent." Dormancy alone is not abandonment. A cold storage wallet untouched for a decade is not a wallet the owner has walked away from.

Galaxy Digital head of research Alex Thorn commented on the filing on X, noting that a real person had stepped forward as the first respondent in a case that had previously proceeded against only silent blockchain addresses.

"A person ('a real human being' not 'any form of inanimate data') has filed a notice of appearance in the abandoned property litigation where 'Noah Doe' is claiming title over Satoshi's coins. Someone is stepping up to fight noah doe as a respondent, not just amicus brief.", Alex Thorn (@intangiblecoins), X

What This Actually Threatens

The instinct is to dismiss this case as unenforceable. No court order can move Bitcoin without the private keys. That instinct is right, but it misses the real risk.

A declaratory judgment of ownership does not transfer Bitcoin. What it creates is a competing title claim, a legal cloud over the property that makes the wallet encumbered in the eyes of regulated exchanges, custodians, and financial institutions. A holder who later tries to sell or use that Bitcoin through any regulated venue could face a freeze, a clawback demand, or a compliance block. The Bitcoin stays on-chain, but its path to liquidity gets cut off.

The second-order risk is the pseudonymity question. John Doe 33 explicitly cited the physical threat that comes with publicly controlling a large Bitcoin position. If the court requires identification as a condition of appearing in the case, holders face a binary: reveal themselves and paint a target on their back, or stay silent and watch a default judgment go uncontested. A precedent allowing pseudonymous participation would create a viable defense template for the other 39,068 named addresses. A ruling requiring identification effectively silences them.

The Noah Doe lawsuit has drawn comparisons to property-rights cases where the mechanism of enforcement matters less than the legal cloud it creates. The same dynamic played out when courts began issuing judgments against frozen sovereign assets. Euroclear's fight in Brussels over roughly $232 billion in Russian assets shows how a paper judgment can encumber property for years before physical transfer ever becomes a question.

What to Watch at the July 14 Hearing

Judge Kathy J. King has a stay in place and a hearing set for July 14, 2026, at 60 Centre Street, Part 6. The agenda covers Ian Cohen's amicus application and John Doe 33's motion to dismiss.

Two outcomes determine everything. If King rules that Bitcoin addresses qualify as "found property" under Article 7-B and denies the motion on jurisdictional grounds, the case proceeds and every dormant wallet now has a legal cloud over it. If the motion is granted on either of its two defects, the Noah Doe theory collapses before it ever reaches a ruling on ownership. The pseudonymous-appearance question, whether John Doe 33 can continue to contest without revealing his identity, is equally consequential and will surface at or before that hearing.

Since the lawsuit was filed, 52 named wallets have moved 34,335 BTC on-chain, per Alex Thorn's reporting at Galaxy Research. Holders are already reacting. Whether they can also defend their property in court, without sacrificing their physical safety to do it, is the question July 14 will begin to answer.

Sources

• NYSCEF Docket, Index No. 153119/2026 (search Index No. 153119/2026, New York County)
• Alex Thorn (@intangiblecoins), X (verify exact post URL at @intangiblecoins before publish)
• First reported by CryptoSlate, July 2, 2026