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Silent for nearly 15 years, Bitcoin address sees activity, sparking ownership lawsuit over New York's "Dormant Bitcoin" BlockBeats News, July 6th, an almost 15-year dormant Bitcoin address recently experienced its first-ever transaction, sending out 30 BTC, valued at approximately $1.88 million at the current price.
According to Galaxy Research on-chain data, the address "1KV47" had received 30 BTC in August 2011 and had remained inactive until this past Saturday when it made its first outward transfer.
This address is one of the 39,069 dormant Bitcoin addresses involved in a lawsuit in New York. The plaintiff "Noah Doe" and two companies registered in Wyoming are attempting to claim ownership of the Bitcoin in these long-dormant addresses under New York's unclaimed property law. Sani, the founder of the analysis platform Timechain Index, stated that these addresses collectively hold around 3.7 million BTC, valued at approximately $234 billion, including addresses widely believed to belong to Satoshi Nakamoto.
Alex Thorn, research director at Galaxy Digital, stated that the activity of dormant addresses related to this lawsuit has significantly increased recently. In June, a total of 31 addresses transferred 17,527 BTC, compared to only 5 addresses transferring 4,834 BTC in February this year.
However, the legal community generally considers the basis of this lawsuit to be weak. Last Friday, a defendant claiming to control one of the addresses, "John Doe 33," applied to dismiss the lawsuit, arguing that a Bitcoin address is merely a data string and not a suable entity.
Edwin Mata, CEO of the tokenization platform Brickken and a lawyer, stated that mere long inactivity of an address does not prove that the assets have been abandoned. Under property law, establishing abandonment of property usually requires evidence of the owner's explicit intent to abandon the property, and dormant addresses may only indicate long-term cold storage, lost private keys, or the owner's choice to hold for an extended period, thus not sufficient to support the plaintiff's claims.