A pseudonymous respondent has appeared in New York court to challenge a lawsuit seeking control of over $200 billion worth of long-dormant coins tied to the network’s earliest days, including those linked to Satoshi Nakamoto, Bitcoin’s pseudonymous founder.
The respondent, using the name John Doe 33, filed a notice of appearance on June 30 in New York Supreme Court, saying he is a “natural person and a real human being” with constitutionally protected property rights.
He said he is not “a Bitcoin blockchain address string, a digital wallet, a line of source code, or any other form of inanimate data.”
The filing marks a shift in the litigation brought by ABC Company, XYZ Company, and a pseudonymous plaintiff operating as Noah Doe, who are seeking to claim ownership of Bitcoin associated with 39,069 inactive addresses under New York lost-property law.
The targeted wallets include coins widely attributed to Satoshi Nakamoto and other early Bitcoin miners.
The case now has a person on the other side
John Doe 33’s appearance changes the posture of a lawsuit that had previously centered on silent blockchain addresses.
The plaintiffs’ case treats the inactive wallets as lost property and seeks legal title to about 3.799 million Bitcoin.
At current market prices, the targeted coins are worth more than $200 billion, while the plaintiffs list the claim at $10 for statutory and jurisdictional purposes.
That gap has drawn attention across the crypto industry as the lawsuit asks a court to grant ownership over one of the largest pools of dormant Bitcoin ever identified, while relying on the claim that inactivity can support a lost-property theory.
John Doe 33’s filing pushes the court toward a different question of whether a person who may have rights tied to those assets can be reduced to a numbered wallet entry.
Speaking on this development, Alex Thorn, head of research at Galaxy Digital, said:
“A person (‘a real human being’ not ‘any form of inanimate data’) has filed a notice of appearance in the abandoned property litigation where ‘Noah Doe’ is claiming title over Satoshi’s coins. Someone is stepping up to fight noah doe as a respondent, not just amicus brief.”
The respondent is also fighting to stay anonymous
Meanwhile, the mystery claimant is trying to contest the case without exposing himself to the risks associated with his large crypto holdings.
John Doe 33 said his pseudonym was adopted to protect his identity, safety and privacy in a high-profile proceeding involving risks of doxxing, extortion and physical targeting against identified cryptocurrency holders.
He also said he is separately asking the court for permission to proceed under a pseudonym. John Doe 33 went further by reserving all defenses and objections, including those raised in an accompanying motion to dismiss.
Meanwhile, the filing carefully separates the person from the wallet list. John Doe 33 said his name does not correspond to the 33rd Bitcoin address in the plaintiffs’ exhibit or to any specific numbered entry.
He argued that the numbered John Does in the caption are the plaintiffs’ labels for inanimate blockchain addresses, whereas he is appearing as a person.
That distinction could shape the next phase of the case. If the court allows pseudonymous participation, other holders may have a path to contest the lawsuit without publicly linking themselves to valuable Bitcoin addresses.
On-chain moves and legal warnings set up the challenge
John Doe 33’s appearance landed after the lawsuit had already been strained by on-chain movements and outside legal objections.
Crypto previously reported that about 52 of the addresses named in the lawsuit transferred roughly 34,335 Bitcoin, worth more than $2 billion at current market valuations.
These transfers created a factual problem before John Doe 33 created a legal one. Bitcoin wallets can remain inactive for years for reasons unrelated to abandonment, such as long-term custody, cold storage, lost keys, or a deliberate decision not to transact.
This means that the movements weakened any simple link between dormancy and surrender.
Apart from that, the lawsuit had also faced organized legal resistance in late May, when pro-Bitcoin attorney Ian Cohen filed an amicus brief challenging its viability.
At the time, Cohen argued:
“Plaintiffs’ theory is wrong on every level: textual, structural, constitutional, and practical. Article 7-B of the New York Personal Property Law was designed for physical objects physically found by human beings. It has no application to a computational scan of a public ledger. Dormancy on a public blockchain is not abandonment. It is, in many cases, the deliberate choice of a Bitcoin holder who stores private keys securely and transacts rarely.”
Meanwhile, Thorn, citing the novelty of the case, previously urged major industry participants to intervene in the matter before it could set a precedent for claiming dormant crypto wallets through abandoned-property claims.
In light of these developments, the next phase of the lawsuit will likely turn on two questions: whether the court allows John Doe 33 to defend the case under a pseudonym, and whether his motion to dismiss can halt Noah Doe’s bid before the lawsuit advances toward any claim of title over the wallets.
A ruling on either issue could determine whether other potential holders have a safe path to appear in court, or whether the case continues to test how far lost-property law can be pushed against inactive Bitcoin addresses.
