Sometimes someone does something that makes you think, 'Why the hell had no one tried this before?' That's the question that crossed my mind when I learned about 'Noah Doe', a (presumably) placeholder name for a man who is trying to get the New York courts to officially recognise him (and the other plantiff companies) as the owner of 39,069 seemingly abandoned Bitcoin wallets worth billions of US dollars.
Doe's complaint, brought to my attention by International Cyber Digest on X, was filed at the start of this month (PDF warning) in the New York Supreme Court. The suit makes the case that Doe should be given legal ownership of the seemingly abandoned wallets because the correct procedures were followed to attempt to "return" the virtual wallets to their owners under the city's law.
In normal circumstances—with, say, a regular physical wallet—if enough time passes without anyone claiming ownership a...
English (US)