A second amicus brief has been filed in New York Supreme Court opposing Noah Doe’s effort to claim ownership of dormant Bitcoin addresses, including coins widely associated with Satoshi-era m
A second amicus brief has been filed in New York Supreme Court opposing Noah Doe’s effort to claim ownership of dormant Bitcoin addresses, including coins widely associated with Satoshi-era mining, through New York abandoned-property law.
The latest brief was submitted by The Digital Chamber with assistance from CahillNXT and Brown Rudnick attorney Stephen Palley, based on public case updates circulated by Galaxy Research and later market summaries. It challenges the attempt to treat long-inactive Bitcoin addresses as abandoned property that can be transferred through a court order.
The case, filed as ABC Company, XYZ Company and Noah Doe v. John Does 1-39,069 under Index No. 153119/2026, seeks legal title to 39,069 Bitcoin addresses and their contents. Galaxy Research’s case review placed the disputed set above 3.7 million BTC and said it includes addresses tied to Patoshi-pattern mining, the Mt. Gox hacker address and other early wallets.
Noah Doe’s theory has already drawn one formal challenge. Attorney Ian Cohen filed a proposed amicus brief arguing that public Bitcoin addresses are not found property, that private keys control the coins, and that inactivity does not prove abandonment. A New York judge later paused the dormant-wallet case before a July 14 hearing on Cohen’s amicus request.
The new filing adds another obstacle before Noah Doe can seek any default-style ownership order against thousands of pseudonymous wallet holders.
The earlier Cohen brief argued that New York’s lost-property statute cannot be mapped onto self-custodied Bitcoin in the way the plaintiffs propose. Bitcoin ownership is not transferred by listing public addresses on a USB drive, sending OP_RETURN messages or waiting for a public response from owners who may never see those notices.
The case has also been weakened by onchain activity from addresses described as dormant. A 2011-era wallet moved 35.55 BTC after the Noah Doe notice, showing that at least one address in the wider dispute still had an owner capable of signing a valid transaction. Another listed address later moved 999.6846 BTC onchain, adding more pressure to the claim that inactivity equals lost ownership.
Those movements do not resolve the case. They hit the factual premise behind it. Bitcoin can sit untouched for years because an owner is holding, using cold storage, preserving privacy, managing inheritance or waiting for a better security setup. Silence onchain is not the same as a legal surrender of title.
The court fight is now centered on whether outside briefs stay in the record before the case moves further. Cohen’s role already helped stop the plaintiffs from moving quickly toward an uncontested outcome, and the second amicus brief adds institutional pressure against treating dormant Bitcoin as claimable found property.
The dispute now sits beside a broader question for custodians, exchanges and courts. A paper judgment cannot move Bitcoin without private keys, but it can create competing title claims that regulated entities may have to evaluate if any disputed coins reach their platforms.
The July 14 hearing remains the next scheduled court marker in the Noah Doe case, with the first amicus application, the existing stay and the plaintiffs’ abandoned-property theory all still before the New York Supreme Court.
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