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Latest Update on the “Legal Claim to Satoshi Nakamoto Bitcoin” Case: The Case Is Still Pending; Attorney Calls for Avoiding a Unilateral Ruling
Svmuu News: Alex Thorn, Head of Research at Galaxy Digital, has released an update on the latest developments in the lawsuit surrounding “the case seeking to assert legal ownership of Satoshi Nakamoto’s Bitcoin,” filed by two anonymous Wyoming-based companies. The companies are seeking a court ruling that the approximately 39,069 BTC held in a long-dormant Bitcoin address constitutes “abandoned property,”and thereby obtain legal title to the relevant BTC. The assets in question are reportedly valued at over $200 billion and include some wallets believed to date back to the “Satoshi era”: 1.On May 29, Ian R. Cohen, an attorney with Bitcoin, submitted an amicus curiae brief. His key arguments included: New York’s lost property laws do not apply to self-custodial Bitcoin; “dormant” does not equate to “abandoned”;the court has no jurisdiction over private keys; he emphasized that within the Bitcoin system, “control of the private key equals ownership,” and without control of the private key, one cannot claim ownership of the assets. 2. On June 4, Judge Kathy King granted Cohen’s request for a hearing and issued a stay on the entire case, freezing further proceedings pending a formal trial. This move effectively prevented the plaintiff from obtaining a judgment through the “no response → default judgment” route. 3. On June 18, the plaintiffs’ attorney, David Lin, filed a motion to rescind or narrow the stay order, arguing that non-parties should not influence the course of the case and contending that if the defendant did not appear, amicus curiae briefs would be unnecessary. 4. On June 19, Cohen filed a forceful rebuttal, stating that the stay was initiated by the court itself, and that “no appearance by the defendant” was precisely the structural issue in this case—the 39,069 addresses listed as “defendants” were inherently unable to appear in court.therefore the court must rely on third-party opinions to avoid a default judgment. He further questioned the plaintiff’s attempt to circumvent procedural thresholds by setting a $10 claim amount while seeking to advance a determination of ownership potentially involving hundreds of billions of dollars Bitcoin, and emphasized that on-chain data indicates that some addresses “flagged as dormant” still experienced transfers during the proceedings,with at least 52 addresses having moved approximately 34,335 BTC (about $2.48 billion), including 29 addresses that transferred approximately 12,302 BTC “after service of process,” thereby undermining the core premise of “abandoned assets.” Alex Thorn noted in his analysis that the case is still pending; if a default judgment is issued, it could have far-reaching implications for the legal definition of self-custodial assets under Bitcoin and spark a long-term debate over whether “dormant addresses are equivalent to unclaimed assets.”
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