The legal fight over thousands of dormant Bitcoin addresses has taken another turn after attorney Ian R. Cohen filed a new rebuttal defending the court-ordered stay in the Noah Doe case.
The dispute, filed in New York County Supreme Court as ABC Company et al v. John Does, Index No. 153119/2026, seeks legal title over 39,069 Bitcoin addresses under New York’s lost-property framework. The plaintiffs are listed as Noah Doe and two unnamed Wyoming LLCs, ABC Company and XYZ Company.
The claimed address set includes long-dormant early Bitcoin wallets, addresses tied to Satoshi-era mining and other high-value coins. Galaxy Research’s earlier review placed the case around more than 3.7 million BTC across the claimed addresses, making the lawsuit one of the largest property-rights claims ever aimed at Bitcoin.
Cohen Pushes Back On Lost-Property Theory
Cohen entered the case on May 29 with a proposed amicus brief that attacked the core theory behind the claim. The brief argued that New York’s lost-property law does not apply to self-custodied Bitcoin wallet addresses, that inactivity does not prove abandonment and that scanning a public blockchain does not make someone a legal finder of the coins.
The filing also focused on the practical limit of any court order. Bitcoin can only move with a valid private-key signature. A judgment can create a paper claim, but it cannot transfer coins from an address unless the private key signs a transaction.
Justice Kathy J. King paused the case after Cohen’s filing, with the NYSCEF docket showing a June 5 decision and order tied to the stay. Noah Doe’s lawyers opposed that pause, but the latest June 20 case update said Cohen has now filed a rebuttal against their attempt to move the case forward.
Active Wallets Challenge The Abandonment Claim
Cohen’s latest pushback also goes after the factual premise that the named addresses are abandoned. The blockchain is public, and several addresses listed in the case have moved coins, creating direct tension with the claim that silence equals lost ownership.
The June 20 recap said Cohen argued that plaintiffs have a duty of candor when named addresses show activity. If an address has moved Bitcoin, then someone had access to the private key, which weakens the idea that the wallet was abandoned or permanently inaccessible.
That matters because the lawsuit is not only about Satoshi-era coins. A court order treating dormancy as abandonment could create a legal cloud over any old UTXO that has not moved for years, even where the owner is simply holding long term, managing inheritance, preserving privacy or using cold storage.
July Hearing Becomes The Next Legal Test
The dispute now heads toward a July 14 hearing on Cohen’s amicus application and the stay. If the court keeps Cohen involved, the case will have an adversarial challenge on the record before any default-style outcome can develop against pseudonymous wallet addresses.
The case also lands beside a wider debate over dormant Bitcoin ownership. CZ recently argued that Satoshi’s Bitcoin could be frozen after a future quantum-resistant upgrade, while earlier Bitcoin quantum-risk debates have already put Satoshi’s untouched stash at the center of hard questions about property rights, security and long-term inactivity.
The confirmed status is an active New York case, a court stay entered after Cohen’s May 29 amicus filing, a new rebuttal against the plaintiffs’ opposition to that stay and a July 14 hearing that could determine whether the Bitcoin self-custody argument stays in the case.
