Noah Dow, a New York resident, has filed a lawsuit claiming ownership of approximately 39,069 dormant Bitcoin addresses containing an estimated 3.7 to 3.8 million BTC—valued at roughly $285 to $286 billion at current market rates. The case represents an unusual legal test of whether cryptocurrency abandonment laws can be applied to long-inactive digital wallets under New York's lost-and-found property statutes.
Dow developed an algorithm to identify Bitcoin addresses that had remained untouched for at least five years, excluding exchange wallets and addresses that showed no activity even during periods of significant Bitcoin price appreciation. From approximately 42,000 identified dormant addresses, he reported his findings to the New York Police Department's 17th precinct as lost property and attempted a year-long notification campaign using both public outreach and on-chain messaging via OP_RETURN—a method that embeds short messages directly into Bitcoin transactions to alert wallet holders of potential ownership claims.
According to the complaint, 424 addresses responded with on-chain activity to demonstrate active ownership, while additional addresses were excluded for other reasons, leaving 39,069 addresses uncontested. Dow now invokes New York's lost-property law, arguing that after reporting the finding to authorities and allowing adequate time for owners to claim their assets, he should gain legal ownership rights to the unclaimed wallets.
A critical limitation undermines the practical viability of Dow's claim: he possesses no private keys to the wallets. Even if a court recognizes his legal ownership, he would be unable to transfer or access the bitcoins. However, a favorable ruling could establish precedent treating prolonged wallet inactivity as grounds for legal claims of abandonment, potentially creating new litigation risks for holders of legacy addresses, cryptocurrency exchanges, custodians, and heirs to dormant accounts.