CoinMarketCap reports:
A Bitcoin address that had been dormant since 2011 suddenly transferred funds this week, reigniting attention on a major New York lawsuit concerning the ownership of a long-inactive wallet. On-chain activity indicates that some ancient bitcoins, deemed abandoned by the plaintiff, may still be under the control of the original holder.
This week’s transfers to addresses from 2011
On-chain data shows that address 1LwWt transferred out 35.55 BTC on June 2, with 15 BTC sent to a new address and the remaining 20.55 BTC retained as change in a new output. These bitcoins first entered the address in March 2011, when the price of BTC was less than $1.
Alex Thorn, Head of Research at Galaxy Research, stated that this address corresponds to one of the defendants on their tracked list. According to him, this transfer indicates that the associated assets were not truly under no one’s control.
The plaintiff claims 3.8 million BTC.
This case was filed in a New York state court in March 2026 and amended in May. The plaintiffs include an individual operating under the pseudonym Noah Doe and two Wyoming limited liability companies holding assigned interests. The complaint covers 39,069 long-dormant wallets.
The plaintiff, relying on New York State’s abandoned property laws, claims legal ownership of approximately 3.8 million BTC, valued at around $285 billion according to reported figures, and identifies Noah Doe as the “finder” of these assets.
Notifications are sent via OP_RETURN
The court approved the plaintiff’s use of the OP_RETURN field in Bitcoin transactions to send notifications to the relevant addresses. This field allows short text or links to be written on-chain and has been used to deliver disposal notices.
Reports indicate that the plaintiff’s advisory firm sent 98 batches of dust transactions, each worth 546 satoshis, containing notification links in June and July 2025. The address 1LwWt received the notification on July 31, 2025, with a 90-day response period.
The anomaly occurred during the BTC pullback phase.
In addition to 1LwWt, another wallet that had been inactive for approximately 15 years transferred 20 BTC earlier, but reports indicate that this address does not appear to be within the scope of the notice. Galaxy previously reported that hundreds of wallets had conducted transactions during the notice period and were therefore not included in the final defendant list.
This movement of ancient addresses coincides with a weakening in Bitcoin’s price. The report notes that BTC briefly dropped to around $70,000, influenced by factors including Strategy’s first public disclosure of Bitcoin sales, ten consecutive trading days of net outflows from U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs, and stalled ceasefire negotiations between the U.S. and Iran.
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