The blockchain association Digital Chamber, which unites leading market players—from crypto exchanges to investment giants—has filed an amicus brief with the New York Supreme Court, demanding the dismissal of a lawsuit claiming ownership rights over inactive Bitcoin addresses. According to the organization, granting such a lawsuit would create a precedent that undermines the fundamental principle of self-custodial storage of digital assets.
The essence of the plaintiffs' claims, filed under the pseudonyms Noah Doe and two Wyoming-registered companies, is that bitcoins on addresses that have shown no on-chain activity should be considered abandoned property. They claim to have "found" 42,001 such addresses, recording their public data on USB drives and turning them over to the police as found property. However, Digital Chamber strongly disagrees with this interpretation.
A Dangerous Precedent for the Entire Industry
"The plaintiffs demand recognition of their ownership rights to hundreds of billions of dollars in digital assets solely because these assets have not been moved or spent," the association's brief emphasizes. Digital Chamber notes that the plaintiffs did not create these addresses, do not control them, and, most importantly, do not possess the private keys. Granting such a lawsuit, according to experts, would create a "cloud of uncertainty" affecting not only the crypto industry but also traditional financial markets, undermining trust in long-term asset storage.
The association challenges the very logic of the "find": "What he 'found' was not the wallets themselves, but electronic records of digital wallet addresses—that is, public keys." The plaintiffs sent notifications to these addresses via OP_RETURN, giving owners 90 days to respond. As a result, out of 42,001 addresses, they excluded 2,932 where activity was detected, but declared the remaining 39,069 addresses "abandoned." According to court documents, these addresses hold approximately 3.799 million BTC, including wallets linked to Satoshi Nakamoto and the Mt. Gox hack.
The Problem of Private Keys and a Real Threat
Even if the court rules in favor of the plaintiffs, the key issue remains: without private keys, control over the coins is impossible. Digital Chamber rightly points out that "the declaration the plaintiffs seek would provide a paper title to property, unconnected to either possession or access to the property." This creates an absurd legal fiction.
Notably, attorney Ian Cohen, who filed the first amicus curiae brief, also demands the dismissal of the lawsuit, arguing that the law on found property was created for physical objects, not for data from a public blockchain. Moreover, under the law, such assets should revert to the state, not to private individuals. Meanwhile, pseudonymous defendant John Doe 33, the owner of one address holding 5,000 BTC (valued at $300 million), contests the lawsuit, stating that the defendants in the case are address strings, which are not legal entities.
Expert opinion: This lawsuit is a clear example of an attempt to use outdated legal norms to seize digital assets. If the court supports this logic, it would create an existential threat to the entire self-custodial storage model. Anyone who simply holds bitcoins for a long time risks one day discovering that their assets have been declared "abandoned" and transferred to third parties. This is not just a legal oddity—it is an attack on the very essence of decentralization.