NY court pauses $235B lawsuit over dormant Bitcoin wallets

A New York state court has temporarily halted a lawsuit over the ownership of 39,069 dormant wallets containing approximately 3.8 million BTC, valued at $235 billion, BeInCrypto reported. The suit was initially filed in March by an anonymous plaintiff and two companies who claimed ownership under a state law that allows finders to keep unclaimed lost property. However, the court suspended the proceedings after accepting an objection from a lawyer. The objection argued that the lost property law applies only to tangible items that can be physically possessed and that BTC, existing on a public blockchain, cannot be considered legally lost. The wallets in question reportedly include funds from the Mt. Gox hack and some linked to Bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto. Recently, fund movements have been detected from some of these wallets.