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·5 min readIn late 2025, the United States government began releasing over 60,000 pages of documents related to Jeffrey Epstein — the convicted sex offender and financier who died in a Manhattan jail cell in 2019. The release followed the passage of the Epstein Files Transparency Act in November 2025, which mandated the declassification of FBI, DOJ, and U.S. attorneys' office records.
While much of the media coverage has focused on Epstein's connections to political figures and celebrities, a less-discussed but equally fascinating thread runs through the documents: Bitcoin and cryptocurrency.
Perhaps the most consequential revelation involves Epstein's financial role in keeping Bitcoin's development alive during a critical period. In 2015, the Bitcoin Foundation — the organisation that had been funding the cryptocurrency's infrastructure and core developers — collapsed. This left Bitcoin's five core maintainers without institutional backing at a pivotal moment when key protocol upgrades were being debated.
Newly released emails from the House Oversight Committee reveal that Joi Ito, then-director of the MIT Media Lab, moved quickly to recruit three of the five core Bitcoin developers to MIT's newly formed Digital Currency Initiative. In a message forwarded to Epstein, Ito wrote:
"Used gift funds to underwrite this, which allowed us to move quickly and win this round. Thanks."
Epstein had donated $525,000 to the MIT Media Lab between 2013 and 2017. His reply to the Bitcoin developer recruitment news was characteristically brief:
"Gavin is clever."
— referring to Gavin Andresen, Bitcoin's former lead developer.
This placed Epstein at the financial periphery of one of Bitcoin's most consequential institutional shifts. While he did not control Bitcoin's protocol, his funding helped sustain the lab that became the new home for its primary maintainers.
The released documents also show Epstein engaging directly with cryptocurrency regulation. In February 2018 emails, Epstein discussed U.S. crypto tax policy with Steve Bannon, former White House chief strategist under Donald Trump.
In the exchange, Epstein asked Bannon:
"Will Treasury respond to you re: crypto or do we need another way in for advice."
When Bannon explained that the National Security Council — not Treasury — was handling digital asset concerns, Epstein pivoted, noting that "there is an office of terrorism finance at Treasury that has thought about tax."
Most notably, Epstein advocated for a voluntary disclosure programme that would allow Americans to report realised cryptocurrency gains — arguing such a measure would help identify bad actors in the space. This shows Epstein positioning himself as a policy influencer on crypto regulation, leveraging his connections to people close to the White House.
In 2019, just weeks before his arrest, Epstein weighed in on Facebook's Libra stablecoin project (which later rebranded as Diem before being abandoned). In emails to an associate, he drew a distinction between currency and money, writing:
"Libra is not a currency!! It is money… not the same"
He warned that the project could be dangerous if "the wrong kind of people" gained access to it.
Epstein was arrested on federal sex-trafficking charges less than two weeks after this exchange. He never saw the eventual failure of the Libra/Diem project — or the crypto winter and subsequent bull run that would follow.
The documents also confirm a now-infamous August 2015 dinner in Palo Alto where Epstein sat with Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, and Peter Thiel — arranged by LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman and Joi Ito. This gathering took place just months after MIT had recruited Bitcoin's core developers using Epstein-connected funds.
The dinner placed Epstein at the same table as the tech leaders who would go on to champion Bitcoin and crypto as tools for decentralisation. Peter Thiel, who received a $40 million investment from Epstein into his venture firm Valar Ventures in 2016, would later describe Bitcoin as "deeply contrarian" and rail against the "financial gerontocracy" he believed was suppressing its potential.
It's important to note that Bitcoin itself is not implicated in any wrongdoing. The cryptocurrency's decentralised, open-source nature means that no single funder or institution controls it. However, the Epstein documents reveal how traditional power networks — wealth, access, and institutional influence — intersected with the crypto world during some of its most formative years.
For the blockchain community, these revelations serve as a reminder that the technology's promise of decentralisation exists in tension with the reality that its early development and institutional adoption were shaped by the very concentrated power structures it sought to disrupt.
As Malta continues to position itself as a forward-thinking jurisdiction for blockchain and digital assets through frameworks like the Virtual Financial Assets Act, understanding these historical intersections between traditional finance, political power, and cryptocurrency is essential for building a more transparent and accountable ecosystem.
Published
February 10, 2026
Reading Time
5 minutes
Last Updated
February 10, 2026