A bitcoin address that had never spent a coin since its 75 BTC arrived in February 2011 sent all of them to a new address on Thursday 12 November, and it spent the court-ordered notice of the Noah Doe bitcoin lawsuit in the same transaction. The transaction was confirmed in block 975,608 at 22:46 UTC. The address, 1313TARBFzoSbXQUL7yu32p9TjoBhUPx2M, is defendant No. 3,419 in the New York case that seeks title to about 3.8 million BTC, CoinDesk reported on 13 November.
At $66,950 per bitcoin at 05:39 UTC on Saturday 14 November, the 75 coins are worth about $5.0 million. The whole claim, 3.8 million BTC across 39,069 addresses, comes to roughly $254 billion at that price. The dollar figure depends on the price used, and outlets have quoted anything from $234 billion to $293 billion since the spring.
Nobody has said who signed the transaction. CoinDesk’s report carries no comment from the plaintiffs or their lawyers, and no court appearance for this address has been reported. The chain, though, records every step of the move.
Six inputs, one output: what the 12 November transaction contains
The transaction gathers every coin the address ever received, six in all, and sends them to a single new SegWit address, bc1q7upzc44p5v9wt5se40xt4grpwzalfe85zrcsd9. There is no change output and no second recipient. The fee was 1,209 satoshis. At 05:50 UTC on 14 November, mempool.space still showed the 75.00000978 BTC unspent at the new address.
Two of the inputs are the real money: 1 BTC and 74 BTC, both received in block 106,805 on 7 February 2011. The four others are dust, tiny payments of 546 to 548 satoshis that third parties sent to the address over the years. The address has seven transactions in all.
| Date (UTC) | Block | Amount received | What it is |
|---|---|---|---|
| 7 Feb 2011 | 106,805 | 1 BTC and 74 BTC | The original coins, in two payments |
| 20 Sep 2020 | 649,234 | 547 sats | Dust from a 241-output transaction, no message |
| 13 Jul 2025 | 905,373 | 548 sats | Dust with the text “NOTICE TO OWNER” and a Salomon Brothers link |
| 29 Nov 2025 | 925,696 | 546 sats | Dust from a SegWit address, no message |
| 22 May 2026 | 950,466 | 546 sats | Dust with “COURT-ORDERED LEGAL NOTICE” and the case link |
| 12 Nov 2026 | 975,608 | All six spent | 75.00000978 BTC sent to one new address |
The two messages sit in OP_RETURN outputs, a field that lets a transaction carry a short piece of data. Decoded, the July 2025 one points to an owner-notice page of Salomon Brothers Strategic Advisors, the consultant the plaintiffs hired. The May 2026 one reads “COURT-ORDERED LEGAL NOTICE” followed by the address of the plaintiffs’ notice page, which hosts the summons and first amended complaint.
CoinDesk counted six inputs but described only five. The chain settles it: two coin payments and four dust payments. Two of the dust payments carry no message at all, and nothing on chain says who sent them or why.
How the Noah Doe bitcoin lawsuit uses New York’s lost-property law
The case is ABC Company, XYZ Company and Noah Doe v. John Does 1-39,069, Index No. 153119/2026, in the Supreme Court of New York County. It was filed on 11 March 2026 and amended on 1 May. The plaintiffs are a pseudonymous individual, Noah Doe, and two Wyoming companies holding assigned interests. Brooklyn firm Lewis & Lin LLC represents them, according to the notice page.
The claim does not rest on theft or hacking. It asks the court to declare the plaintiffs owners of 39,069 addresses under Article 7-B of New York’s Personal Property Law, the lost-and-found statute, with Doe cast as the finder. Bitcoin Magazine described it as believed to be the first attempt in US history to claim title to bitcoin under such a statute.
Why a $10 valuation matters
Article 7-B sets different waiting periods depending on what the found property is worth. An unnamed expert hired by the plaintiffs valued each address at under $10 “as is” at the time of the find. That figure puts every address on the fastest track, section 257(2), where title vests one year after the find, Bitcoin Magazine reported. The complaint gives three vesting dates: 26 December 2025, 31 March 2026 and 14 April 2026.
At market value the addresses would fall into a bracket with a three-year police holding period. The complaint says USB drives listing the addresses were delivered to the New York Police Department’s 17th Precinct.
The valuation is the weak point critics go for. Galaxy Research found that 99.9% of the defendant addresses hold bitcoin worth considerably more than $10, according to Bitcoin Magazine. About 21,923 of them show the “Patoshi” mining pattern that researchers attribute to Satoshi Nakamoto, with around 1.096 million BTC between them. One holds 79,957 BTC taken in the 2011 Mt. Gox hack. Our guide to Satoshi Nakamoto and bitcoin’s early years explains where the Patoshi coins come from.
Service by dust
A lawsuit has to be served on the people it targets. These defendants are unknown, so the court allowed alternative service under CPLR 308(5), the New York rule that lets a judge approve another method when the usual ones are impractical. Each of the 39,069 addresses received a 546-satoshi payment, worth a few cents, with an OP_RETURN link to the pleadings. Galaxy counted 98 batch transactions in blocks 950,446 to 950,576, sent on 21 and 22 May 2026.
The notice to 1313TARB arrived in block 950,466 at 05:41 UTC on 22 May, which fits that range. It was not the first message the address got. Salomon Brothers had already sent an owner notice in July 2025, in an earlier round run by the plaintiffs’ consultant before the suit was filed. TFTC reported that 424 wallets moved before the filing and were left off the defendant list.
Where the case stands: stayed since June, no ruling reported since 8 September
A default judgment had looked possible about 30 days after the May service, since unknown defendants rarely answer. It did not happen. In early June Justice Kathy J. King signed a stay of the proceedings pending a hearing on 14 July. Baker McKenzie lawyers noted that Article 7-B dates from a time when “property” meant tangible items, and that “a wallet address is not a thing that can be physically secured.”
On 16 July, the court issued new orders to show cause, set a further hearing for 8 September and kept the case fully stayed, with the plaintiffs barred from pursuing default applications, TFTC reported on 22 September. That hearing was set to deal with requests from the Bitcoin Policy Institute and the Digital Chamber to take part in the case.
No outcome of the 8 September hearing has been reported since. TFTC’s 22 September report called it the main unresolved question, and CoinDesk’s 13 November story mentions no new order. The plaintiffs’ notice page, which the court order requires, lists no hearing date and no update. As of 14 November, no ruling that any address is abandoned has been reported, and no order has awarded bitcoin to anyone.
Other named wallets that moved
This is not the first defendant address to wake up. CoinDesk recalled in its 13 November story that a listed wallet holding 35.55 BTC since 2011 had spent 15 BTC in June and sent the rest back to itself as change. It was among the first named holders to show they could still sign.
The moves kept coming. Between 6 and 22 September four long-dormant wallets moved a combined 1,971.03 BTC, TFTC reported from Galaxy Research data. The lawsuit tag was independently confirmed for only one of them, a 100 BTC transfer on 19 September by the address Galaxy labels “Noah Doe #3113”. On 18 October an address Galaxy tags “Noah Doe #970”, funded in September 2013, sent 411.45 BTC to an unlabelled address, Decrypt reported.
What sets the 12 November transaction apart is not its size. It is that the notice dust itself was spent. Reports on the earlier moves were about the coins. This time the chain shows the court notice output swept into the same transaction as the coins, next to the consultant’s 2025 notice.
What moving the coins proves, and what it does not
It proves that someone holds the private key to an address the plaintiffs describe as lost, and used it on 12 November. Bitcoin only follows signatures, so whoever signed controls the coins today. Our page on what a private key is explains why nobody else can move them.
It strongly suggests that a long silence was not abandonment. Baker McKenzie lawyers wrote in June that “traditional abandonment law typically requires intent to relinquish ownership, not mere nonuse.” A holder who signs a transaction 15 years later is acting like an owner, whatever a court ends up making of it.
It does not prove that the holder read the notice. Wallet software that sweeps an address usually takes every unspent output, dust included, so spending the notice payment is what an ordinary consolidation would do. It is also what someone who wanted to clear marked outputs from a wallet would do. The chain cannot tell the two apart. Spending the dust does not erase the message either: the OP_RETURN text stays in block 950,466 for good.
It does not show that the lawsuit prompted the move. CoinDesk said it was unknown whether it did, and the coins sat through 16 months of notices before moving. Nor does it show that the signer is the person who received the coins in 2011. Keys can be sold, inherited or held by a custodian, and the chain only records the key.
Nor does it make the holder a party to the case. No appearance for defendant No. 3,419 has been reported. Whether a court would treat a transaction as any kind of response to service is an open legal question that no ruling or published analysis of the case has settled.
Why a win for the plaintiffs would not hand over the coins
Even a judgment declaring Doe the owner would not move a satoshi. The plaintiffs do not have the keys, and the network does not read court orders. In Baker McKenzie’s words, “any judgment would likely be symbolic rather than self-executing” unless regulated intermediaries are involved. That is where it could bite: if a holder ever sent the coins to an exchange or custodian in the United States, a court order could be used against that firm.
That is also why the wallets that keep moving matter for the case. Each one is a holder who could still spend, and a defendant the plaintiffs’ own logic struggles with. Holders of old coins kept in a cold wallet are in the same position as this one: as long as the key is safe, the coins answer only to it.
What to watch next
- Any order from Justice King on the requests heard on 8 September, or a new hearing date in the index 153119/2026 file.
- An appearance or filing for defendant No. 3,419, the 1313TARB address.
- Whether the 75 BTC leave bc1q7upz… and where they go, in particular to an exchange that would have to answer to a court.
- Further moves by named addresses, which Galaxy and others track and which keep shrinking the list of coins anyone can call lost.