A Bitcoin address that had been dormant since 2011 suddenly transferred funds this week, bringing renewed attention to a major lawsuit in New York over the ownership of dormant wallets. The on-chain anomaly suggests that some of the ancient Bitcoins, which the plaintiff considers "abandoned," may actually still be under the control of their original holders.
2011 address transfer this week
On-chain data shows that address 1LwWt transferred 35.55 BTC on June 2nd, with 15 BTC going to a new address and the remaining 20.55 BTC remaining as change in the new output. This batch of Bitcoins first entered this address in March 2011, when the price of BTC was less than $1.
Alex Thorn, research director at Galaxy Research, stated that the address corresponds to one of the defendants in a lawsuit on their tracking list. According to him, this transfer demonstrates that the assets in question were not truly out of control.
The plaintiff claims 3.8 million BTC.
The case was filed in New York State court in March 2026 and amended in May. Plaintiffs include an individual using the pseudonym Noah Doe and two Wyoming LLCs holding the transferred interests. The complaint covers 39,069 long-dormant wallets.
The plaintiffs are claiming legal ownership of approximately 3.8 million BTC, valued at approximately $285 billion according to reports, based on New York State laws regarding lost property, and have identified Noah Doe as the “finder” of these assets.
Notifications are sent via OP_RETURN
The court approved the plaintiff's request to send a notification to the relevant address via the OP_RETURN field in the Bitcoin transaction. This field allows short text or links to be written on-chain, and therefore can be used to accompany a notice of abandonment.
The report indicates that the plaintiff's advisory firm sent 98 batches of dust transactions with notification links in June and July 2025, each worth 546 satoshis. The 1LwWt address received the notification on July 31, 2025, with a 90-day response period.
The anomaly occurred during the BTC pullback phase.
Besides 1LwWt, another wallet that had been dormant for about 15 years also transferred out 20 BTC earlier, but reports indicate that this address appears to be outside the scope of the notification in this case. Galaxy previously stated that hundreds of wallets had made transfers during the notification period, and therefore were not included in the final list of defendants.
This round of ancient address anomalies coincided with a weakening Bitcoin price. The report noted that BTC briefly fell back to around $70,000, influenced by factors including Strategy's first public disclosure of a Bitcoin sale, 10 consecutive days of net outflows from the US spot Bitcoin ETF, and the stalled ceasefire negotiations between the US and Iran.
