Millions of files related to Jeffrey Epstein have brought to light his ties to the highest echelons of the cryptocurrency industry. Documents published last week by the US Department of Justice reveal Epstein bankrolled the principal home and funding source for bitcoin, the world’s largest cryptocurrency, during its nascent stages; he also invested $3m in Coinbase in 2014, the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the US, and cut a check that same year to Blockstream, a prominent bitcoin-focused technology firm. Both crypto startups accepted Epstein’s investments in 2014 – six years after his 2008 conviction in Florida for soliciting prostitution from a minor. The crypto companies that secured Epstein’s investment have grown into multibillion-dollar giants, especially Coinbase, which went public on the Nasdaq in 2021, and whose co-founder, Brian Armstrong, has heavily influenced crypto regulation in the United States.
Epstein’s 2014 investment in Coinbase was brokered by the crypto evangelist Brock Pierce, a former child actor and a co-founder of Tether, the world’s largest issuer of stablecoins, a kind of cryptocurrency whose value is typically pegged to a national currency. Documents published by the Justice Department reveal Fred Ehrsam, a Coinbase co-founder who spearheaded its fundraising, liaised with Pierce about Epstein’s investment in the company and sought to meet with Epstein “if convenient”. Additional filings suggest Epstein sold half of his shares to Pierce’s firm, Blockchain Capital, for $15m in 2018. Epstein’s financing of bitcoin’s development stemmed from his role as a donor to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
In communications from 2015 between Joichi Ito, then director of MIT’s Media Lab, and Epstein, Ito wrote that Epstein’s “gift funds” were used to “underwrite” the launch of the Digital Currency Initiative, an offshoot of the Lab tasked with researching and developing open-source crypto technologies; in the same email thread, Ito explained that the Lab’s role was to serve as the “principal home and funding source” for bitcoin. The Digital Currency Initiative did not respond to requests for comment. In 2014, Ito brokered Epstein’s investment in Blockstream, which builds bitcoin-focused tech solutions. Epstein made a $500,000 early-stage investment in the company through an investment fund he co-owned with Ito.
Email communications reveal Blockstream’s co-founders, Adam Back and Austin Hill, were invited by Epstein to meet in St Thomas, close to Little Saint James, the private island Epstein owned. Luke Dashjr, an early contributor to bitcoin’s development as well as to Blockstream, has called for Adam Back to resign from his role as Blockstream’s CEO over ties to Epstein. In an interview with the Guardian, Dashjr said Epstein’s interest in bitcoin – namely, his “attempts to undermine” bitcoin’s network, early-stage companies, and developers – was a sign that “evil men often seek to destroy what is good”. Charlotte Fang, the founder of Remilia, which makes NFTs and other crypto-based art, said “only unserious people might care” about Epstein’s investment in bitcoin and Coinbase; in the latter case, “only the financially unsophisticated” would assume that he had “any degree of influence over the direction” of the exchange, as his seven-figure investment was a small part of Coinbase’s fundraise.
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