Ripple EX-CTO Mocks Lawsuit Claiming Ownership of 3.7 Million Abandoned Bitcoins

A lawsuit filed in a New York court in May 2026 seeks to declare a claimant known as Noah Doe the legal owner of more than 39,000 dormant Bitcoin (BTC) wallets, targeting a combined 3.79 million BTC.

They reported the addresses to the NYPD and sent on-chain and press notices to potential owners, though questions have since emerged about whether the notifications actually reached the wallets that hold the funds.

Lawsuit Targets Satoshi Nakamoto’s Alleged Stash

The amended complaint names wallets attributed to Satoshi Nakamoto alongside early miner addresses, Casascius Coin holdings, and wallets linked to hackers and unidentified entities. The combined face value of those addresses runs into hundreds of billions of dollars at current bitcoin prices. Recurring debates about Satoshi’s alleged Bitcoin holdings and the Bitcoin creator’s identity have long shown how difficult it is to attribute early wallets with any certainty.

Ripple CTO David Schwartz, known on X as JoelKatz, offered a dry take on the case. One post had observed that a court might one day approve “something dumb like this” and that any such ruling would carry little practical weight. Schwartz, who recently flagged a major BitLocker security flaw and shared his meme coin investing views, agreed but carved out one exception.

Bitcoin SV (BSV) is the Craig Wright-linked fork that has historically adopted governance positions. Critics argue these choices make it more open to external legal pressure than the main network. Wright himself has pursued court-ordered claims over BTC-related assets and intellectual property in the past. This lends Schwartz’s quip a pointed edge.

Why Bitcoin’s Node Network Would Simply Ignore the Ruling

Bitcoin itself operates without any central authority capable of enforcing a forced ownership transfer. Thousands of independent node operators globally maintain the protocol. None of them would implement a change to satisfy a court order. Any ruling purporting to transfer dormant BTC would be enforceable only under specific conditions. This requires that private keys could be seized through traditional legal channels. However, this condition does not apply to the wallets at the center of this suit.