Dormant $1.9M Bitcoin Wallet Moves After 15 Years, Tied to New York Lawsuit

A Bitcoin address that had sat untouched for nearly 15 years made its first transaction on Saturday, moving 30 BTC worth roughly $1.88 million. The address, known as “1KV47,” had held the funds since receiving them in August 2011, according to blockchain data shared by Galaxy Research.

The wallet is one of 39,069 addresses named in a New York lawsuit filed by a plaintiff identified as “Noah Doe” along with two Wyoming-based companies, who are seeking legal ownership of dormant Bitcoin holdings under the state’s lost-property law. Many of the addresses in the case are widely linked to Bitcoin’s pseudonymous creator, Satoshi Nakamoto, and together hold an estimated 3.7 million BTC, valued at roughly $234 billion.

Wave of Dormant Wallets Becoming Active

Activity among the addresses named in the lawsuit has picked up in recent months. Thirty-one addresses moved a combined 17,527 BTC in June, up sharply from five addresses that transferred 4,834 BTC in February, according to Galaxy Digital’s head of research.

Legal Challenge Over What Counts as “Lost”

A defendant referred to as “John Doe 33,” who says they control one of the named addresses, filed a motion last week to dismiss the case, arguing that Bitcoin addresses are simply data strings and cannot be treated as parties to a lawsuit.

Legal experts have raised similar doubts about the case’s foundation. Edwin Mata, a lawyer and CEO of tokenization platform Brickken, said a court can rule on rights tied to intangible property, but cannot convert public addresses into legally “found” property just because a plaintiff copied them onto a hard drive. He noted that inactivity alone does not amount to abandonment under property law, since abandonment typically requires clear intent to give up ownership.

Mata added that many of the dormant addresses could represent coins in long-term cold storage, wallets with lost private keys, or holders who simply choose not to move their funds, making the lawsuit’s underlying claim difficult to support without access to the private keys needed to control the assets.