The Ian Cohen Bitcoin lawsuit targeting 39,069 wallet addresses holding an estimated $238 billion in dormant BTC gained another layer of complexity on 19 June, when attorney Ian R. Cohen filed a court rebuttal opposing efforts to revive proceedings that have been stayed by New York Justice Kathy King.
Cohen, founder of IRC Legal, is participating on a pro bono basis as amicus counsel. His latest filing pushes back against plaintiff attorney David Lin’s attempt to overturn the court-ordered stay. Cohen argues the stay was issued on the court’s own authority under New York procedural law, not simply granted at his request.
Noah Doe’s ‘Finder’ Theory and the Abandoned Property Claim
The suit was filed on 1 May 2026 by anonymous plaintiffs identified as ABC Company, XYZ Company (both Wyoming-based LLCs) and an individual using the pseudonym Noah Doe. According to NewsBTC’s explainer on the case, Noah Doe claims to have discovered the dormant wallets using a self-developed algorithm, reported them to the NYPD under lost-and-found property law, and spent over a year attempting to return the assets before filing suit.
The legal hook is New York Personal Property Law Article 7-B. Doe is arguing he qualifies as a ‘finder’ under that statute, and that title to the wallets vested in him by operation of law once all reasonable efforts to locate their owners failed. The wallets include addresses associated with Satoshi Nakamoto and the ‘1Feex’ address, which blockchain researchers have linked to Bitcoin stolen during the Mt. Gox breach.
There is a conflict in the reported valuation of the holdings: the complaint and most coverage cite $238 billion, while IRC Legal’s own newsroom puts the figure at $300 billion for the same set of wallets.
Cohen’s Core Argument Against the Ian Cohen Bitcoin Lawsuit Proceedings
Cohen’s position has been consistent across filings. New York’s lost-property statutes do not apply to self-custodied Bitcoin; wallet inactivity alone does not establish abandonment; and private keys are outside the jurisdictional reach of New York courts. The wallets, he argues, cover roughly 3.8 million BTC held pseudonymously across 39,069 addresses, meaning the actual owners are unlikely to appear in court to contest the claim.
That last point carries real procedural weight. Cohen’s filing warns that lifting the stay could allow plaintiffs to obtain a default judgment against the wallet addresses unopposed, which would effectively transfer property rights over billions of dollars in Bitcoin without any adversarial challenge from the holders.
A hearing on Cohen’s amicus application is scheduled for 14 July.
On-Chain Activity Undermines the Abandonment Narrative
The abandonment thesis faces a factual problem: some of the wallets have moved funds. Cohen’s filing points to outbound transactions from addresses listed in the complaint itself, indicating that holders with access to the relevant private keys have been active.
Alex Thorn, Managing Director and Head of Firmwide Research at Galaxy Digital, published a thread on 20 June corroborating that conclusion. Galaxy identified 52 named addresses that collectively moved 34,335 BTC; of those, 29 addresses transferred 12,302 BTC after receiving notice of the lawsuit. As TechFlow Post reported, Thorn has also flagged that a default judgment, if issued, could set a precedent with far-reaching implications for the legal treatment of dormant Bitcoin addresses across the network.
Active wallets showing post-notice outflows are a direct rebuttal to the Article 7-B finder theory: you cannot abandon property you are still moving.
Ripple CTO Emeritus David Schwartz raised a separate objection last month, questioning how any New York court could assert jurisdiction over wallets whose owners are unknown and geographically dispersed across a decentralised network. Schwartz described the jurisdictional argument as the lawsuit’s most serious weakness and warned the legal theory could leave Bitcoin holders exposed to asset seizure via default judgment.
The 14 July hearing will be the first real test of whether Cohen’s amicus standing survives. If it does, the stay likely holds; if it collapses, the path to that unopposed default judgment opens up.
