Latest development in the case attempting to claim legal ownership of Satoshi Nakamoto's Bitcoin: lawyers request to avoid unilateral rulings, stating that addresses with long-term untransferred BTC do not equate to loss or abandonment.

Deep Tide TechFlow message: On June 20, Galaxy Digital research director Alex Thorn released the latest updates on a lawsuit seeking to “attempt to establish legal ownership of Bitcoin by Satoshi Nakamoto.” The case was filed by two anonymous Wyoming companies, aiming to have the court recognize approximately 39,069 long-idle Bitcoin addresses as “abandoned property,” thereby obtaining legal title to the relevant BTC—including some wallets believed to belong to the “Satoshi era”:

1. On May 29, Bitcoin attorney Ian R. Cohen filed an amicus curiae brief. The core arguments include: New York State’s abandoned property statute does not apply to self-custodied Bitcoin; “dormant” does not equal “abandoned”; the court has no jurisdiction over private keys; and it emphasizes that in the Bitcoin system, “control of the private key equals ownership,” so without control of the private key, one cannot assert ownership of the assets.

2. On June 4, Judge Kathy King approved Cohen’s request for a hearing and issued a stay covering the entire case, freezing subsequent proceedings before formal adjudication. This effectively blocked the plaintiffs from obtaining a ruling through the “no appearance → default judgment” path.

3. On June 18, the plaintiffs’ attorney David Lin filed an application to revoke or narrow the stay, arguing that actions by non-parties should not affect the case’s progress, and that if the defendants do not appear, the amicus curiae brief would be unnecessary.

4. On June 19, Cohen submitted a forceful rebuttal, arguing that the stay was itself a court action, and that “no appearance” is precisely the structural issue in this case. Treating the 39,069 Bitcoin addresses as “defendants” who cannot respond is problematic; the court must therefore rely on third-party opinions to avoid a unilateral judgment. He also further questioned the plaintiffs’ attempt to bypass the procedural threshold by setting the claim at $10, while trying to move forward with a determination of ownership that could involve BTC worth potentially tens of billions of dollars. He emphasized that on-chain data shows that some addresses “flagged as dormant” still transferred funds during the case period; at least 52 addresses moved approximately 34,335 BTC (about $2.48 billion). Of these, 29 addresses continued to transfer approximately 12,302 BTC even after service, weakening the central premise of “abandoned property.”

Alex Thorn analyzed that the case is still in the trial stage. If a default judgment occurs, it could have far-reaching effects on the legal definition of self-custodied Bitcoin assets and could also trigger a long-running dispute over whether “dormant addresses” are equivalent to ownerless assets.