An anonymous man has filed a “lost property” claim with the New York Police Department demanding he be declared the legal owner of $286,000,000,000 in dormant Bitcoin under the 1958 New York finders law.
A New York court is now set to review a highly unusual lawsuit in which the plaintiff has claimed ownership of approximately 3.7 million Bitcoin held across 39,069 inactive wallets, including addresses widely believed to be linked to Bitcoin’s creator, Satoshi Nakamoto.
The total value of the claim stands at roughly $286 billion at current market rate.
The legal argument is based on the claim that the stash should be treated as abandoned or lost property under older New York legal principles, including provisions dating back to mid-20th-century finders’ laws.
The plaintiff argues that many of the wallets have remained untouched for more than a decade, meeting the threshold for abandonment under traditional property rules.
A central element of the case is the inclusion of wallets attributed to Satoshi Nakamoto, the pseudonymous creator of Bitcoin, whose estimated holdings of around 1 million BTC have never been moved since the network’s early development phase.
The lawsuit has already drawn attention across the crypto industry due to its unprecedented scale and the inclusion of historically significant wallets.
If the claim were taken seriously by courts, it could open the door to many legal attempts to seize dormant digital assets worldwide.
For now, the case remains in early stages.
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