Jeffrey Epstein saw promise in Bitcoin — and its far-right supporters

The Verge · Feb 27, 2026 · Collected from RSS

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The tranche of Jeffrey Epstein emails and files released on January 30th tie the infamous pedophile, sex trafficker, and influence peddler to elite figures across the tech industry. The world of cryptocurrency is no exception. Epstein’s connections are intriguing, disturbing — and worth mapping closely.With his interest first piqued as early as 2011, Epstein was ahead of the game on crypto. The financier understood it as a tool for clandestine payments and shady international finance, and found prominent community members more than willing to welcome him. Bitcoin wasn’t even invented until 2009, which means all of Epstein’s crypto connections formed after his 2008 guilty plea for solicitation of a minor.Between 2011 and 2019, Epstein invested in major crypto exchanges and software development firms. He grew close with one of the most influential yet troubling figures in the field, Tether cofounder Brock Pierce. Epstein even forged ties with Bitcoin’s core development team and mused about changing the technology of Bitcoin itself.But while Epstein courted established crypto players, less reputable branches of his network — notably those tied to Vladimir Putin’s Russia — promoted sketchy investments and likely contributed to massive investor losses during the 2018–2019 height of speculative crypto-mania. Most stunningly, it now appears that one of Epstein’s most eager recruiters worked in crypto marketing and PR, repping both major fintech firms and fly-by-night crypto schemes… while also allegedly scouting women for him to victimize.Epstein’s interest in Bitcoin also aligned with his support for far-right politics. Bitcoin grew from the anarcho-libertarian “cypherpunk” movement, which dreamed of money free of the elite corruption that Epstein has come to represent. But most of the players Epstein supported, including the now publicly traded Coinbase, aligned instead with Elon Musk and Peter Thiel’s authoritarian and bigoted “tech right” — seemingly in part thanks to Epstein’s influence.There’s no evidence Epstein succeeded in shaping crypto’s underlying technology, but his backing for its most extreme political tendencies has had major long-term impacts. That includes strengthening firms that have since become massive channels for funding to Donald Trump — himself, of course, extensively tied back to Epstein.Brock Pierce: “I had a Great Time With the Girls”The most ominous and significant of Epstein’s crypto connections was also likely his first: Brock Pierce.Pierce is a cofounder of Tether, a so-called “stablecoin” that uses blockchain tokens to track US dollars. Epstein met him at the Mindshift Conference held on Epstein’s private island, Little St. James in 2011. A representative for Pierce told the The Hollywood Reporter that Pierce did not know who Epstein was at the time. Mindshift was organized by a literal illusionist named Al Seckel, and emails uncovered by Protos seem to show that Epstein viewed the event as a disaster. He found Pierce one of the event’s few bright spots.Based on the emails, Pierce and Epstein grew closer over the course of 2011 and 2012, and by March of 2012 Pierce was apparently aware of Epstein’s real passion. “I had a great time with the girls,” Pierce appeared to email Epstein. Just two months later, Epstein offered to arrange a meeting between Pierce and “my new Russian” in Los Angeles. Pierce also appears to have met with Epstein and former Harvard president Larry Summers at Epstein’s Manhattan townhouse to discuss crypto at some point between 2008 and 2015.Before meeting Epstein, Pierce had already faced allegations of involvement with the abuse of minors and possession of child sexual abuse material as a young executive at Digital Entertainment Network (DEN), an internet startup, in the early 2000s. In a 2014 letter about the incident, Pierce wrote that one accuser, Michael Egan, had used allegations against Pierce and director Bryan Singer “to extort money.” Pierce was never charged, and Egan later dropped allegations against other Hollywood figures. But Egan’s claims against Singer, who was closely associated with DEN, stood — and were later joined by other accusations.Even Epstein’s ties to Steve Bannon may have begun with cryptoIncredibly, it may have been Pierce who connected Jeffrey Epstein to Steve Bannon, with whom Pierce had a business relationship dating back to 2005. While the origins of the Epstein-Bannon relationship are still murky, Pierce and Epstein appeared to discuss Bannon in December 2016 emails, in which Epstein refers to Bannon as a “pretty smart puppet master.” That’s well before what was previously understood to be the first link between Bannon and Epstein, a dinner arranged by author Michael Wolff in October of 2017.Epstein’s interest in cryptocurrency was seemingly fueled by his continuing relationship with Pierce. In May of 2013, Pierce emailed Epstein about his efforts to buy the Japan-based Bitcoin exchange Mt. Gox. The same year, Epstein enrolled in a general “Introduction to Cryptography” course offered online by Stanford. The course included “methods that ensure both confidentiality and integrity” in encrypted messaging and specifically covered public-key cryptography, a fundamental building block of Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies.Also in May of 2013, Epstein emailed a third party about a possible new cryptocurrency in connection with Pierce, which Epstein describes as “Bit coin without the seediness.” This may have been a reference to what would become Tether. Pierce has said he had no operational role at Tether after 2015, but the firm has faced considerable criticism since then for misrepresenting the holdings backing Tether, and was fined $41 million in 2021 by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.Tether has grown into the world’s largest dollar stablecoin, and much or all of the $185 billion in conventional dollar reserves backing its tokens are custodied by Cantor Fitzgerald — owned by another Epstein contact, US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, until the recent transfer of control to Lutnick’s sons.Pierce did not reply to requests for comment sent by The Verge.Making Bitcoin “More Private”The latest Epstein dump has also revealed his 2014 investment in Blockstream, a cryptocurrency development firm headed by one of the field’s pioneers, Adam Back. Back has since described the investment as coming through a fund run by Joichi Ito, in which Epstein was a limited partner.Blockstream cofounder Austin Hill can be seen in the emails tentatively arranging a visit to Epstein’s Little St. James island, appearing to write in an April 2014 message that “Fri/Saturday on the island are still possible.“ On April 19th, 2014, Epstein told another crypto developer, Amir Taaki, that he’d had “Andy Back [sic]… on my island this weekend.” Blockstream, Back and Hill have not confirmed or denied these visits took place. Blockstream did not reply to a request for comment on Back’s relationship with Epstein.Back was one of the early “cypherpunks” who laid the groundwork for Bitcoin and cryptocurrency. Back’s “Hashcash” paper is cited in the original Bitcoin whitepaper, and Back is among the pioneers sometimes suspected of being Satoshi Nakamoto, the still-pseudonymous creator of Bitcoin. Blockstream and Back have played significant roles in shaping the development of Bitcoin over the past 15 years.It has been known since 2019 that Epstein also donated at least $525,000 to the MIT Media Lab, which used some of those funds to support developers working on the Bitcoin protocol. In a 2015 email, disgraced former MIT Media Lab head Joichi Ito describes using Epstein’s gift funding to move quickly to bring several of those core developers in-house at the Media Lab. Ito refers to this as “taking control” of the developers.The Media Lab’s funding of Bitcoin developers is particularly eyebrow-raising because of Brock Pierce’s indirect role in that takeover. The independent nonprofit Bitcoin Foundation had funded Bitcoin core developers until Pierce was elected director of the foundation in May of 2014. Members of the foundation soon began resigning because of the existing abuse allegations against Pierce, and within a year, the foundation had collapsed, laying off 90% of staff and announcing that it was “effectively bankrupt.”This collapse, triggered by an Epstein friend, enabled the Media Lab, using Epstein’s funds, to “take control” of Bitcoin core developers.Unilaterally imposing changes on Bitcoin would have been difficultThese events have led to loose speculation that Epstein was trying to influence Bitcoin development. But Bitcoin’s 2018 “block size war,” a fierce debate over the amount of data that Bitcoin should be able to process, highlights how challenging this would have been. Bitcoin is an open-source protocol similar to email, not a single software package sold by a company, so changes can’t be unilaterally imposed by any single entity — even the “core” development team. When the “big block” side of the block size conflict ultimately lost, they simply split from Bitcoin and started their own cryptocurrencies. The threat of these “forks” makes major, unilateral changes very difficult.The new emails show Epstein did have substantial discussions about the direction of Bitcoin and cryptocurrency development with Vincenzo Iozzo, who is believed to have been the “personal hacker” described as working for Epstein by an FBI informant. One of Epstein’s hobby horses was the creation of “Sharia compliant” digital currencies for use in the Middle East. Iozzo did not reply to a request for comment by The Verge by press time.But Iozzo’s conversations with Epstein include inaccuracies — most significantly, the idea that Bitcoin is “anonymous.”In fact, Bitcoin is pseudonymous: while real names aren’t attached, the network keeps a public record of all accounts and transactions, making it fairly easy for professional analysts — including those at major US government con