#Altcoins Rally

Investment bank Salomon Brothers has sent notifications to bitcoin addresses it considers "abandoned". The company intends to gain access to them.
The goal is to protect funds from criminals and "rogue states," representatives of the financial institution stated. The legal basis is the "abandonment doctrine," according to which inactive funds for 14 years can be considered unclaimed.
The bank used special transactions to embed messages in the blockchain. This refers to the OP_RETURN script - a standard mechanism that allows arbitrary data to be embedded in bitcoin transactions.
The initiative has sparked controversy in the community. Some suggest a connection between the bank and the self-proclaimed creator of Bitcoin, Craig Wright. CEO of Naoris Protocol, David Carvalho, noted that Salomon Brothers "use the infrastructure of the first cryptocurrency as a bulletin board." According to him, the bank is targeting large wallets, including an address with 80,000 BTC.
Bitcoin owners have been given 90 days to confirm ownership. To do this, they need to make a transaction or fill out a form on the bank's website.
Some users have already reacted and moved their assets to new addresses. A client of Salomon Brothers, whose name is not disclosed, plans to allocate part of the funds to a fund for users who have lost their keys.
The method of gaining access to wallets remains unclear. Carvalho believes that the Bitcoin community "is not doing enough" to protect against threats like quantum hacking. He described the existing security proposals as "completely inadequate," and their implementation speed as too slow given the risk to assets worth $700 billion.
The doctrine of abandonment of property is an established legal tool in classical law, but its application to bitcoin is a highly controversial and potentially dangerous innovation. As there is no precedent in the courts, such an approach may be perceived as an attempt to legalize claims on someone else's assets under legal cover.
It should be noted that CryptoQuant stated that operations with "dormant" coins have become systematic: since 2023, the average monthly transaction volume of "old" bitcoins has increased from 4,900 BTC to 30,700 BTC.