TechFlow reports that on June 20, Alex Thorn, Head of Research at Galaxy Digital, released an update on the latest developments in the litigation concerning “attempts to assert legal ownership over Satoshi Nakamoto’s Bitcoin.” The case was filed by two anonymous Wyoming-based companies seeking a court ruling that approximately 39,069 long-dormant Bitcoin addresses constitute “abandoned property,” thereby granting them legal title to the associated BTC—including some wallets widely believed to date back to the “Satoshi Nakamoto era”:
1. On May 29, Bitcoin attorney Ian R. Cohen submitted an amicus curiae brief. Its core arguments include: New York’s lost-property laws do not apply to self-custodied Bitcoin; “dormancy” does not equate to “abandonment”; courts lack jurisdiction over private keys; and—critically—in Bitcoin’s architecture, “control of the private key equals ownership,” meaning asset claims are impossible without private-key control.
2. On June 4, Judge Kathy King granted Cohen’s request for a hearing and issued a stay of the entire case, freezing all subsequent proceedings pending formal trial. This effectively blocked plaintiffs from obtaining a default judgment via the “no appearance → default judgment” pathway.
3. On June 18, plaintiffs’ counsel David Lin filed a motion to vacate or narrow the stay, arguing that non-parties should not impede case progression and that amicus briefs are unnecessary if no defendants appear.
4. On June 19, Cohen submitted a forceful rebuttal asserting that the stay was proactively imposed by the court itself; that “no appearance” is precisely the case’s structural flaw—since the 39,069 Bitcoin addresses cannot appear as defendants—and thus the court must rely on third-party input to avoid rendering one-sided judgments. He further challenged plaintiffs’ strategy of using a $10 claim value to circumvent procedural thresholds while pursuing ownership determinations potentially affecting hundreds of billions of dollars worth of Bitcoin. Cohen also emphasized on-chain data showing that some addresses labeled “dormant” remained active during the litigation period: at least 52 addresses moved roughly 34,335 BTC (approximately $2.48 billion), with 29 addresses transferring about 12,302 BTC even after service of process—undermining the foundational premise of “abandoned assets.”
Alex Thorn analyzes that the case remains ongoing. Should a default judgment be entered, it could profoundly reshape the legal definition of self-custodied Bitcoin assets and ignite enduring debate over whether “dormant addresses” equate to ownerless property.
