Satoshi-era wallet served in a $260 billion lawsuit moves 75 BTC it held since 2011
A Bitcoin wallet created in the cryptocurrency's earliest years moved its coins for the first time since 2011 on Thursday, weeks after receiving a tiny payment carrying notice of a New York lawsuit.
The wallet, listed as defendant No. 3,419 in the amended complaint, moved all of its roughly $5 million to a new address on Thursday evening. Swept along with the fortune was a tiny payment that had arrived months earlier, sent by lawyers to tell the wallet’s owner that they were being sued.
The lawsuit, filed in New York by a plaintiff identified only as Noah Doe and two Wyoming companies, makes a striking claim. It asks a court to declare them the owners of Bitcoin held in 39,069 addresses, on the theory that any wallet left dormant for at least five years contains lost property that can be claimed under New York law.
The lawsuit targets roughly 3.8 million BTC, including coins attributed to Bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto, as CoinDesk previously reported. Because no one knows who owns the wallets, the court allowed the plaintiffs to notify them in an unusual way, by sending each address a minuscule amount of bitcoin carrying a message that linked to the legal papers.
Court-ordered notice
On May 22, this address received 546 satoshis, worth less than 40 cents at recent prices, through a transaction carrying the message “COURT-ORDERED LEGAL NOTICE” and a link to the plaintiffs’ notice page. A satoshi is one hundred-millionth of a bitcoin.
Thursday’s transfer spent that payment alongside the original 75 BTC and three other tiny deposits. One carried a separate July 2025 owner notice from Salomon Brothers Strategic Advisors, the consultant the plaintiffs hired to contact wallet holders.
Those small payments arrive separately from the original coins. The transaction combined all six into one payment, leaving the old address empty. Bitcoin idle since 2011 moved months after lawyers sent it a court notice.
The transfer shows someone can still spend them, but does not identify that person or establish whether the lawsuit prompted the move.
Abandoned property claim
The transfer does not reveal who controls the wallet. But it complicates the lawsuit’s central premise — which is that the money had been abandoned. Other addresses named in the lawsuit have also moved. CoinDesk reported in June that a listed wallet holding 35.55 BTC since 2011 had spent 15 BTC and returned the remainder to itself as change.
Even a ruling for the plaintiffs would not hand them the private keys needed to spend the bitcoin. The complaint says a hired expert valued the “found wallets” at less than $10 because recovering their contents was uncertain.
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