A Bitcoin address that had held 35.55 bitcoin worth $2.54 million untouched since March 2011 moved its coins earlier this month, becoming one of the first publicly visible responses from a named defendant in a New York state lawsuit claiming legal ownership of 39,069 dormant bitcoin wallets.
The wallet, 1LwWtSs7tMCwcRczQd5kVMv3xpWw6w4Sxe, sent 15 BTC to a new address and contained the remaining 20.55 BTC as change in transaction b90755b at 16:46 UTC on June 2, recorded in Bitcoin block 952, mem10space data.
The original coins were received on March 27, 2011, when bitcoin trades for less than a dollar.
The lawsuit, filed March 11, 2026 in New York County Supreme Court under index number 153119/2026 and amended May 1, names a pseudonymous plaintiff identified only as Noah Doe along with two Wyoming LLCs with assigned interests, ABC Company and XYZ Company.
The plaintiffs are seeking legal ownership of about 3.8 million bitcoins worth approximately $285 billion under New York Personal Property Law Article 7-B, the state’s lost property statute, with Noah Doe positioned as a “finder” under the abandoned property doctrine.
The court approved on-chain service by the defendants through OP_RETURN messages, a Bitcoin transaction field that lets users embed short text or URLs permanently on the blockchain.
Noah Do’s blockchain consultant, Salomon Brothers Strategic Advisors, issued 98 batches of dust transactions across Bitcoin blocks 950,446 to 950,576 in June and July 2025, each with 546 satoshis and a link to the abandonment notice. The 1LwWt wallet was served on July 31, 2025 with a 90-day deadline to respond.
Galaxy Research’s Alex Thorn flagged the move on X Tuesday morning and identified the wallet as the firm’s tracked Noah Doe defendant #38215. “Apparently they were not actually abandoned,” Thorn wrote.
The move came nearly seven months after the 90-day response window expired and about three months after the lawsuit was formally filed. According to Galaxy’s analysis, hundreds of wallets moved coins during the initial notification campaign and were excluded from the final defendant list.
The 1LwWt move, which occurred after the lawsuit was already underway with the wallet named as a defendant, is among the first publicly visible responses from the active case.
Meanwhile, a separate 15-year dormant wallet, 1CDSyXAQxro4FPUoqAQb81642ruqDsUiNp, moved 20 BTC ($1.48 million) to a SegWit address about 13 hours before the 1LwWt move, per Arkham Intelligence data. The 1CDSy wallet received its original coins around the same 2011 window, but does not appear to be targeted by the Noah Doe messaging campaign or named in the lawsuit.
The moves come amid a sharp bitcoin slide that has brought BTC close to $70,000 for the first time in weeks, with Strategy’s first published bitcoin sale, a record 10-session spot ETF outflow and stalled US-Iran ceasefire talks all weighing on the market.
Satoshi-era coins were acquired before bitcoin had a meaningful dollar price, meaning any sale at current levels will mark a near-infinite gain on a cost basis.
