The Rs 88 Billion Bitcoin Question: Where Is the Blockchain Evidence?

By an author from the US 

A legal dispute before the Supreme Court of Mauritius has raised an extraordinary cryptocurrency question involving an alleged holding of approximately 155,000 Bitcoin or digital-asset units, reportedly valued in the proceedings at about €1.617 billion (Rs 88.2 billion).

According to published reports of the court proceedings, a company in liquidation alleges that computer equipment connected to the digital assets became unusable while in police custody. The defendants dispute liability as well as important aspects of the amount and valuation claimed. The allegations remain before the Court and have not been established as judicial findings of fact.

Beyond the legal dispute, however, there is an independently verifiable technical question: where is the corresponding evidence on the Bitcoin blockchain?

155,000 BTC Would Be an Extraordinary Holding

The scale becomes apparent when compared with some of the world’s largest Bitcoin addresses.

According to ChainQuery’s Bitcoin blockchain snapshot dated 14 September 2026, the five largest individual addresses held approximately:

A holding of approximately 155,000 BTC would therefore exceed the current balances of the third-, fourth- and fifth-largest addresses on that list.

That does not make the reported holding impossible. Indeed, the two largest addresses demonstrate that a single Bitcoin address can contain more than 150,000 BTC.

Instead, the comparison demonstrates the extraordinary magnitude of the claim and why independently verifiable evidence matters.

Bitcoin Is Not Stored Inside a Laptop

Bitcoin itself is not physically stored on a laptop or hard drive.

A Bitcoin wallet manages private cryptographic keys that authorize transactions involving bitcoins recorded on the blockchain.

If the only private keys were destroyed, the bitcoins could potentially become inaccessible. But destroying a computer does not erase the bitcoins or their historical transactions from the blockchain.

The blockchain survives the computer. This distinction is crucial.

If approximately 155,000 BTC were controlled through the equipment at the relevant time, blockchain records corresponding to those bitcoins should continue to exist today even if the private keys necessary to spend them have been lost.

So Where Are the Public Addresses?

A wallet can control many Bitcoin addresses, meaning investigators should not necessarily expect to find one address containing exactly 155,000 BTC.

The relevant question is instead:
Which Bitcoin addresses were allegedly controlled by the wallet, and what did those addresses contain at the relevant dates?

Public Bitcoin addresses could allow independent experts to examine the balances, transaction history and movement of the alleged assets without revealing the confidential private keys.

That could help answer several important questions: Did the identified addresses collectively contain approximately 155,000 BTC? When did the Bitcoin arrive? Did it subsequently move? And what evidence connects those addresses to the entity claiming control of them?

Blockchain evidence alone cannot automatically prove real-world ownership. That would require additional evidence linking the addresses or private keys to the claimant.

Follow the Blockchain, Not the Speculation

The reported Rs 88.2 billion claim remains a matter for the Supreme Court, and neither the allegations nor the defendants’ responses should be presented as established fact before the evidence is tested. But Bitcoin provides something unusual in such a dispute: an independent and permanent public transaction ledger.

A laptop can be damaged. A hard drive can fail. A private key can be lost. The blockchain record does not disappear with them. For a cryptocurrency claim of this magnitude, the central technical question is therefore not whether someone could control approximately 155,000 BTC. They could.

The more important and independently testable question is:
If approximately 155,000 BTC existed under the claimed control, where is the corresponding evidence on Bitcoin’s public blockchain?

Sources: Bitcoin.org technical documentation; ChainQuery Bitcoin Rich List (blockchain snapshot, 14 September 2026); publicly reported accounts of the ongoing Mauritius Supreme Court proceedings. Bitcoin addresses and transactions can be independently examined through public blockchain explorers including mempool.space and Blockstream Explorer.