A New York lawsuit is seeking ownership of 39,069 dormant bitcoin addresses. The plaintiff, identified as Noah Doe, and two Wyoming-based companies claim they discovered the wallets, reported them to the New York Police Department and are now asking the court to treat the coins as abandoned property under state law. The list includes addresses associated with Satoshi Nakamoto and the 1Feex address linked to the Mt. Gox hack.

The addresses reportedly hold about 3.7 million BTC, worth roughly $285 billion at current prices. But the legal claim faces a basic technical barrier: Bitcoin has no mechanism to transfer coins without private keys. Even a favorable court ruling cannot make the network reassign balances.

The only practical exception would be if some of the coins were moved to a regulated exchange or custodian. In that case, a court could potentially order the intermediary to act. As long as the coins remain on-chain and unmoved, however, control still depends on the keys.

Analysts also point to a flaw in the notice process. Many Satoshi-era coins are held in P2PK scripts, while the plaintiffs reportedly sent notices to related P2PKH addresses that may not hold the actual funds. That makes the case look less like an immediate threat to Satoshi’s coins and more like a legal test of how abandoned-property rules apply to crypto.