A Bitcoin address that held 35.55 BTC untouched since March 2011 moved its coins this week, marking one of the first publicly visible responses from a named defendant in a New York state lawsuit seeking legal title over 39,069 dormant bitcoin wallets. The wallet, 1LwWtSs7tMCwcRczQd5kVMv3xpWw6w4Sxe, sent 15 BTC to a new address and retained 20.55 BTC as change in transaction b90755b at 16:46 UTC on June 2, recorded in Bitcoin block 952,104, according to mempool.space data.
The lawsuit, filed on March 11, 2026, in the New York County Supreme Court under index number 153119/2026 and amended on May 1, names a pseudonymous plaintiff identified as Noah Doe along with two Wyoming LLCs, ABC Company and XYZ Company. The plaintiffs claim legal ownership of roughly 3.8 million bitcoin valued at approximately $285 billion under New York’s lost-property statute, with Noah Doe acting as a “finder” under abandoned-property doctrine. The court authorized on-chain service of defendants via OP_RETURN messages, with 98 batches of dust transactions broadcast by Salomon Brothers Strategic Advisors in 2025, each carrying a link to the abandonment notice.
The 1LwWt wallet was served on July 31, 2025, with a 90-day response window. The recent movement, occurring months after that window expired and after the wallet was named in the active case, comes amid a broader bitcoin market slide that has pushed prices near $70,000. A separate 15-year-dormant wallet, 1CDSyXAQxro4FPUoqAQb81642ruqDsUiNp, moved 20 BTC about 13 hours earlier, though it does not appear to have been targeted by the lawsuit. Galaxy Research’s Alex Thorn identified the 1LwWt wallet as defendant #38215, noting on X: “Apparently, they were not, in fact, abandoned.”
