Someone is trying to use lost property ‘finder’ laws to gain legal ownership of 39,069 Bitcoin wallets, with just one of them being worth nearly $6,000,000,000
A person filing under the placeholder name “Noah Doe” has filed a lawsuit in New York Supreme Court seeking legal ownership of 39,069 seemingly abandoned Bitcoin wallets worth billions of dollars. According to the complaint filed in early May, Doe is attempting to invoke New York City’s lost property finder laws to claim ownership of the digital assets.
Under these traditional property laws, individuals who find lost property and make reasonable efforts to locate the original owner can gain legal ownership after a specified period. Doe’s legal strategy applies this framework to cryptocurrency, arguing that he has followed proper procedures to attempt returning the virtual wallets to their rightful owners. The suit names plaintiff companies alongside Doe in the claim.
The case highlights the novel intersection of traditional property law and modern cryptocurrency. One of the targeted wallets reportedly contains nearly $6 billion in Bitcoin. This unusual legal approach raises questions about whether finder’s laws, developed for physical property, can be applied to digital assets in court proceedings.
The lawsuit represents an ambitious attempt to apply established legal precedents to contemporary cryptocurrency holdings, with potential implications for how abandoned digital assets might be treated under existing property law frameworks.