A man calling himself “Noah Doe” has filed a lawsuit in New York claiming ownership of 39,069 dormant Bitcoin wallets holding around 3.8 million BTC, currently worth an estimated $286 billion.
Doe says he created an algorithm that identified wallets inactive for years. He then reportedly handed the wallet information to the NYPD as “lost property” and received official receipts.
He is now arguing that under a New York lost-property law from 1958, he should legally become the owner because nobody has claimed the wallets.
One of the wallets included in the case is allegedly tied to the Mt. Gox hack from 2011 and contains around 80,000 BTC that has not moved in over 15 years.