David Schwartz, a long-time figure at Ripple, doesn’t believe a recent, very bold lawsuit in the crypto world will have a major impact, even though it challenges the claims of Craig Wright, an Australian computer scientist. Wright himself says the legal reasoning behind the lawsuit is surprisingly weak.
According to U.Today, a new lawsuit aims to legally transfer ownership of 39,069 Bitcoin wallets that haven’t been used in a long time to an unidentified person.
These digital wallets currently hold around $293 billion in value, exceeding the total net worth of Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon.
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“Lost and found” claim
A New York man, using the name Noah Doe, and two companies he’s associated with, have filed a very unusual lawsuit.
It focuses on Bitcoin wallets where users control their own keys and haven’t made any transactions for at least five years.
According to the complaint, Doe created a unique system to identify wallets that were no longer being used.
The plaintiff copied the wallet information onto USB drives and gave them to the police, reporting it as lost property.
The plaintiff’s team then started sending out abandonment notices to various wallets.
Over 400 account holders confirmed they hadn’t given up on their funds. However, more than 39,000 accounts showed no activity at all. This lack of response led Doe to file a lawsuit to establish full legal ownership.
“Comically bad” logic
However, Ripple’s David Schwartz strongly disagrees, arguing that the plaintiff’s reasoning has significant legal problems.
According to Schwartz, the lawsuit faces several major legal hurdles. He specifically pointed out that the court likely doesn’t have the authority to hear the case, and the argument that New York state has jurisdiction simply because the property was found there is weak and unconvincing.
Alex Thorn, the head of research at Galaxy, also doubts the legal claim. His team notes it’s highly unusual to use laws meant for lost property to try and claim ownership of Bitcoin that’s held all over the world.
It would be very unusual for a New York court to legally grant ownership of around $293 billion in Bitcoin to three unknown individuals. This large amount of Bitcoin includes coins believed to be connected to Satoshi Nakamoto, the creator of Bitcoin.
According to Schwartz, the main Bitcoin network would never follow a court order to modify its code, though this might be different for alternative versions of Bitcoin. He stated it’s highly improbable the original Bitcoin network would comply, but that Bitcoin SV, and potentially other current or future versions, could choose to follow such orders directly on their networks.
The core Bitcoin network is highly unlikely to ever comply with legal demands directly. However, Bitcoin SV, and potentially other versions of Bitcoin created in the future, might be designed to enforce court orders at the base level of the network. This is a key reason why we prioritized preventing any single entity from having that level of control over the XRPL.
— David ‘JoelKatz’ Schwartz (@JoelKatz) May 28, 2026
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2026-05-29 09:18