After 14 years, Bitcoin addresses from the Satoshi Nakamoto era have shown activity, and some dormant wallets may still be controlled by their original owners
According to CoinDesk, an address from the "Satoshi era" that has never been used since March 2011, holding 35.55 bitcoins (approximately $2.54 million), made a transfer this week, which is seen as one of the first publicly visible responses from defendants in a lawsuit involving approximately 3.8 million bitcoins (valued at about $285 billion) in New York.On-chain data shows that the address transferred 15 BTC to a new address on June 2, keeping the remaining 20.55 BTC as change. The address initially received bitcoins on March 27, 2011, when the price of BTC was less than $1.In March of this year, a plaintiff using the pseudonym "Noah Doe" filed a lawsuit in New York state court alongside two LLCs from Wyoming, attempting to claim ownership of approximately 3.8 million long-dormant bitcoin wallets under New York's lost property law, positioning themselves as the "discoverer." The court approved sending on-chain notifications to the relevant wallets via the bitcoin OP_RETURN field.In July 2025, the advisory firm Salomon Brothers Strategic Advisors sent dust transactions with links to legal notices to 39,000 wallets, including the aforementioned address, requesting holders to prove ownership within 90 days.Alex Thorn, head of research at Galaxy Research, pointed out that the address corresponds to defendant number 38215 in the case, stating, "Clearly, these bitcoins have not actually been abandoned."Additionally, another address that had been dormant for 15 years, 1CDSyXAQxro4FPUoqAQb81642ruqDsUiNp, also transferred 20 BTC (approximately $1.48 million) on the same day, but this address did not appear on Noah Doe's list of lawsuits.Analysis suggests that the on-chain movements mentioned above indicate that some bitcoins from the Satoshi era, considered "abandoned assets," are actually still under the control of the original holders.
