The Epstein Files Just Exposed Bitcoin's Darkest Secret

Hello and welcome to Coin Bureau's official podcast channel.

My name is Guy and if you're seeking unbiased in-depth information about Bitcoin,

cryptocurrencies, Web3 and all manner of related topics,

then you've come to the right place. I hope you enjoy today's episode.

Recently, over 3 million more pages of the Epstein files were released to the public.

While much of the shocking content was expected, what caught many off-guard

was that some of the files mentioned Bitcoin.

And this has sparked countless headlines across crypto news outlets

and sent social media into a frenzy. There's been a wave of viral posts on X and Reddit making

all kinds of claims, some more credible than others. Some say that Epstein spoke with Bitcoin's

creators, others point to him telling people not to buy BTC and a few even speculate that Epstein

was Satoshi Nakamoto all along. That's why today we're diving deep into the files to see exactly what

they say about Bitcoin and what it could all mean for crypto's future. My name is Guy and you're

watching the Coin Bureau. Now, given the sensitive nature of today's subject matter, I need to make

a few things absolutely clear. First, I'm not a financial advisor and nothing in this video should

be considered financial investment or legal advice. This video is for educational purposes only

and it's intended to inform you about the links between crypto and the Epstein files.

Second, we are not here to discuss Jeffrey Epstein himself, nor are we here to discuss any of his

crimes. If you made it this far into the video, then you probably already know something about

them already, but if not, well, feel free to Google them on your own time. Be warned though,

it's not pretty. And third, we are not here to make accusations about any individuals or groups

that may or may not have been associated with Epstein. Again, feel free to connect those dots on

your own. This is a crypto channel folks and today we're focusing purely on the crypto aspect of

this story. So with that long disclaimer out of the way, let's get to it. Now, as you all know

doubt, no, people everywhere have been pushing for the Epstein files to be made public for years.

These files date back to the early 90s and contain all the evidence gathered by U.S.

law enforcement during their investigation into Epstein's revolting crimes.

This evidence includes court filings, legal records, email conversations, flight logs,

images, videos, interview notes, and everything in between. Essentially anything with a paper trail.

Now, it wasn't until the 18th of November 2025 that the U.S. government passed the Epstein

Files Transparency Act requiring the Department of Justice or DOJ to release all the files to the

public. Then, on the 19th of December 2025, the DOJ released its first batch of Epstein files,

but the release drew by partisan criticism. Not only was the number of files released

small compared to the total number supposedly collected, but they were also heavily

redacted, revealing very little information. Some pages were completely blacked out,

literally showing nothing at all. However, far more information was made public on the 30th of

January this year, when the DOJ released over 3 million pages of additional Epstein-related files.

For context, the DOJ had previously stated there were around 6 million pages in total,

but insisted that it had met its legal obligations and that this latest release would be the final one.

Food for thought. In any case, this batch of Epstein files revealed all kinds of wild details,

most of which you've probably seen plastered across the news and social media already.

And if you're in crypto, you'll know that these emails contained many mentions of Bitcoin

and indeed crypto more broadly. This has everyone in the industry asking questions

they never thought they'd need to ask. Did Epstein help fund Bitcoin's early development?

Which key crypto personalities visited the island? Did Epstein note Satoshi Nakamoto's true identity

or was Satoshi actually Jeffrey Epstein all along? And it's worth repeating that Epstein's ties

to crypto aren't limited to Bitcoin. The files also reveal potential links to other crypto projects

and a handful of crypto companies. Don't worry though, we'll dive back into all of this later on.

Needless to say though, crypto Twitter has been busy losing what's left of its collective mind

over all this and it's easy to see why. It's also worth pointing out that people are still

coming through the released files trying to connect the dots on Epstein's crypto links,

so we can probably expect more details to emerge, especially if the DOJ releases the remaining

Epstein files, though let's face it, that seems unlikely. But if you're looking to keep up with

these developments in real time, then why not join the Coin Bureau's Telegram channel? That's where we

share the latest breaking news, provide deep dive alpha and give you the most important market updates,

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the description or the QR code on screen now. All right then, now that you've got a rough idea

of what's been going on, let's take our first step down the rabbit hole, starting with Jeffrey

Epstein's connections to Bitcoin. One of the most surreal revelations in the files is just how early

Epstein was aware of Bitcoin. For instance, one file shows a September 2012 email from Epstein

saying, quote, the Bitcoin guys said they didn't mind having to go to jail. Sorry, not me.

Well, that age like milk, huh?

Anyways, what's crazy is that Epstein contacted early Bitcoin developer Gavin Anderson

in June 2011, requesting a phone call just two days before Anderson infamously visited

the CIA headquarters to discuss Bitcoin. What's crazy is that this all happened

just weeks after Satoshi had stepped back, hand-picking Anderson as his successor.

Now, the trail here seems to go cold, but it does suggest that intelligence agencies could have

been involved with Bitcoin even from the start. Regardless, in 2013, Epstein was forwarded an email

that simply read, quote, you might like this. The attached email had originally been sent to a

group of wealthy tech figures, including Bill Gates, the world's second richest person at the time.

It contained an analysis of Bitcoin and its future potential. Basically, the email described

BTC as having no intrinsic value driven solely by speculation. However, it also included quotes from

various investors with many showing excitement about Bitcoin's potential to disrupt the legacy

finance system. Safe to say, Epstein seems to have been a speculator. That's because the files

revealed that in 2015, Epstein helped MIT MediaLab director Johichi Ito fund MIT's Digital Currency

Initiative or DCI. This is significant because at the time, the DCI was a major funding source for

Bitcoin's primary development team, Bitcoin Core. What's crazy is that Ito emailed Epstein,

explaining that at the time, the Bitcoin Core team consisted of five core developers,

including Gavin Anderson, Vladimir Van der Laan and Corey Fields, plus around 100 additional

contributors. Ito outlined how the Bitcoin Core team was being paid by the nonprofit Bitcoin

Foundation. However, in 2015, a newly elected board member said the foundation was effectively

bankrupt, and subsequent statements from Anderson and others confirmed it was under severe

financial stress. So, MIT's MediaLab quickly stepped in, and those three core developers joined

the MediaLab team. Ito described this as, quote, a big win for us. Now, here is where things get spicy.

MIT had previously claimed that Epstein donated a total of $850,000 to the research facility

with $525,000 going to the MediaLab. However, in 2019, an investigative journalist alleged that

Epstein and his associates had actually contributed much more, as much as seven and a half million

dollars. Whatever the amount, the key takeaway is, though, that some of the MIT MediaLab gift

funds linked to Epstein were used to support the DCI, which paid the salaries of several Bitcoin

Core developers. This means that Epstein's money indirectly helped fund Bitcoin's development

for years. That said, though, it's extremely important to note that investment in Bitcoin Core

does not mean controlling Bitcoin in any way. More importantly, there's no evidence that Epstein

influenced the team's technical roadmap or governance, and he does not appear to have steered

Bitcoin's direction in any visible way. It's also important to note that Epstein wasn't

always a strong believer in Bitcoin's potential. As is the case with speculators, his interest in

Bitcoin fluctuated over the years. For instance, in 2014, he had an email exchange with billionaire

investor Peter Teal. In that email, Epstein wrote that, quote, there is little agreement on what Bitcoin

is, store of or intrinsic value, currency, property, architecture, payment system, etc.,

conflicting goals, anonymous but transparent, before making a bizarre comparison to gender

identity. After BTC's price surged in 2017, Epstein was asked directly if Bitcoin was still

worth buying. He replied with one word, no. Now, keep in mind, at the peak of the 2017 bull market,

BTC didn't even top $20,000, not financial advice, but there's probably a lesson in there

somewhere. Now, as you can imagine, social media was set ablaze after this was all discovered,

creating the perfect environment for trolls to spread fake news and add even more to the chaos.

One of the wildest rumors to go viral is the obviously false theory that Jeffrey Epstein was

actually Satoshi Nakamoto. This rumor was sparked by an image that when viral, apparently showing

a 2008 email from Epstein to now convicted partner in crime, Galein Maxwell. The fake email reads,

quote, Galein, the Satoshi pseudonym is working perfectly. Our little digital gold mine is ready for

the world, funding secured, Jeffrey. The post has millions of views, thousands of likes and hundreds

of retweets. And to be fair, it's easy to see why. At first glance, it looks like a legit email.

On closer inspection, though, you'll notice that it has two lines where one should be the subject

line instead. And if you search the Epstein files on the DOJ website, you'll find no such email

exists. People really will do anything for likes these days. That said, though, Epstein did claim

to have contacted Satoshi Nakamoto. In 2016, he emailed two Saudi contacts proposing two ideas,

a digital currency for the Middle East, likely a stablecoin, and a sharia-compliant crypto based

on Bitcoin. He then claimed to have, quote, spoken to some of the founders of Bitcoin who were

apparently very excited about the idea. Sure. To be clear, these emails don't prove that Epstein

actually spoke with Satoshi or that he knew Satoshi's true identity. However, they do show that

Epstein knew enough about Bitcoin's infrastructure to propose replicating and modifying it, either

making it compliant with religious laws or making it a usable alternative monetary system.

In any case, this raises the question. Does it bring us closer to uncovering Satoshi's true identity?

The short answer is yes and no. If Epstein did have contact with Satoshi like he claims,

the fact that he referred to Bitcoin's founders plural suggests that Satoshi may actually be

more than one person. Assuming that's true, which seems unlikely, then this aligns with years

of speculation that Bitcoin was too complex for a single mind to come up with. Not to mention

the Bitcoin white paper repeatedly uses WE instead of I. So, who could the real person or people be?

Well, as you probably know, people have been guessing at Satoshi's identity for well over a decade

and numerous names have been tossed into the mix along the way. To bring you up to speed,

here are some of the strongest contenders. The first is Hal Finney, who was involved in Bitcoin

before it even launched and was even the first person to ever receive a Bitcoin transaction.

Another contender is Nick Sabo, an OG cipher punk who suggested a digital peer-to-peer currency

called BitGold in 2005. Another is Adam Beck, who created HashKash, which Bitcoin's proof of work

is based on. Beck is even mentioned by Satoshi in the Bitcoin white paper. And there's also

Len Sasserman, a cipher punk cryptographer with an interest in privacy tech, who sadly passed away

in 2011 shortly after Satoshi stepped away from Bitcoin. And there are also theories that Satoshi

was British based on British spellings he used in his writings, and the fact that a headline from

the Times, the UK newspaper, was engraved in the Genesis blog, the first blog ever mined on the

Bitcoin blockchain. However, all of these are speculative guesses, each with their own evidence

to suggest that they're not actually Satoshi. So for now, the true identity of Bitcoin's creator

remains a mystery, but we can be sure it wasn't Jeffrey Epstein. Now, something else that's

been brought to light in the Epstein files is the various investments he made in different crypto

companies. But before we get into those, I'll reiterate what I mentioned earlier. We're not

here to pass judgment on anyone who interacted with Epstein in any way. In other words,

any names mentioned from here on shouldn't be taken as accusations of any wrongdoing.

All we're focusing on are the documented facts surrounding these investments and deals.

With that in mind, one of the most talked about investments from the Epstein files involves

block stream. As it happens, Epstein participated in the $18 million oversubscribed

seedrand for block stream back in 2014. Specifically, Epstein made a personal investment of $50,000

through a fund linked to Joy Ito, who you'll recall was the director of the MIT Media Lab at the time.

That fund took a small minority stake in block stream seedrand, but not before Epstein's

initial investment was bumped up to half a million dollars instead of $50,000. Anyhow,

this investment raised several eyebrows, and shortly after the latest batch of files were made

public, block stream CEO, the aforementioned Adam Back, took to ex to make a statement. Back

basically confirmed Epstein's indirect involvement with block stream, but also added that quote,

a few months later, Ito's fund divested its block stream shares due to a potential conflict

of interest and other concerns. Block stream has no direct nor indirect financial connection

with Jeffrey Epstein or his estate. Meanwhile, another controversial detail that's come to light

is that an Epstein-related entity invested around $3 million in Coinbase in 2014,

the same year as the block stream investment. This isn't too surprising though. Epstein was known

for putting money into just about anything. Intriguing though, the investment opportunity was

actually presented to Epstein by Brock Pierce, a co-founder of both venture firm blockchain capital

and USDT issuer, Tether. Now, at the time of Epstein's 2014 investment, Coinbase was obviously

much smaller than it is today, valued at just $400 million at the time. Epstein reportedly sold

50% of his stake in 2018 for $15 million, a very nice return on his initial investment.

It's unclear if or when he sold the remaining 50%, but by then he'd already pocketed millions

in games. Now, when it comes to Epstein's connections to Altcoins, there are a few worth

highlighting. The first is his connection to Zcash, a leading privacy coin. In 2018, Epstein received

an email from Madar's Vezza, a research scientist who had worked with Joy Eto at the MIT Media Lab.

In a nutshell, Vezza wrote that Zcash was about to fork. He noted that all his coins were still

held by the company and suggested they consider withdrawing their allocation to potentially benefit

from both forks. The second and third Altcoins Epstein had connections to Art Ripple and Stella.

In a July 2014 email titled Stella isn't so stellar,

Blockstream co-founder Austin Hill told Epstein that Blockstream was unhappy about his investments

in both Ripple and Stella. In his words, quote,

Ripple and Gets New Stella are bad for the ecosystem we are building and it does our company

damage to have investors who are backing two horses in the same race. Hill even added a warning

saying he'd been asked by other co-founders to quote, reduce or take your allocation away.

Now, at this point, you might be thinking that Ethereum probably also has connections to Epstein,

given how it exploded onto the scene in 2015, right when Epstein appears to have been

pretty active in the crypto space. However, Eath Holders out there will be relieved to know that

Ethereum is barely mentioned at all in the Epstein files. Although, something that's truly fascinating

is that Masha Drakova, a Russian-born investor in US-based VC, wrote to Epstein in 2017,

claiming to have found a young blockchain developer in Russia who quote, could become better

than Vitalik Buterin if he focused on technology and offered to connect the two.

This makes you wonder whether Vitalik himself was contacted first but refused to be trapped,

prompting Drakova to try and find a Vitalik 2.0. But this is purely speculation

and it's not clear if an alternative Vitalik was ever contacted. Still, it's good to know that

Vitalik himself was never captured. Okay, so, with everything we've covered today, you might be

asking yourself at this point whether Bitcoin has been compromised in some way. Well, the short answer

is no. Despite all the fun circulating on social media. Newsflash, Bitcoin doesn't have a

senior management position and even if Epstein had financial involvement with Bitcoin Core,

suggesting he influenced its code simply isn't true. Moreover, Bitcoin Core commits

surged post-2015 due to debates around scaling, segret and the lightning network. So, all of

those GitHub commits were related to things that had no impact on Bitcoin's core ethos pun intended.

Still, all this Epstein talk does raise questions about Bitcoin's image and honestly, it is a bit

of a setback. Even if Bitcoin itself wasn't affected directly, the fact that it's mentioned

in the Epstein files isn't exactly flattering. And let's face it, crypto has a bad enough

image problem as it is. However, there is an important silver lining to this. Despite all the

disgusting activity detailed in the Epstein files, there's no evidence that crypto was used to

finance any of it. This may surprise some given Bitcoin's past ties to criminal activity,

but thankfully, crypto isn't cast as a villain here, which, well, makes a change. This matters more

than you might think because it means the investors paying the closest attention, like institutions,

likely haven't had their perception of Bitcoin shaken by these events. If anything,

this arguably strengthens Bitcoin's case. After all, if Bitcoin has survived the collapse of

major exchanges like Mt. Gox and FTX, internal debates like the block size wars and monsters like

Jeffrey Epstein, then a few regulatory changes in 2026 and beyond will be a walk in the park by

comparison. Institutions are forward looking. Once the Epstein dust settles, those decades old emails

will barely register. Although, if more files are released in the future, we could see new information

emerge, information that could potentially make things more challenging for the crypto industry.

So, fingers crossed we've already seen the worst because all things considered crypto hasn't come

off too badly from all of this. Even if some key players in crypto have been implicated in the files

in some way, still, it's reassuring to know that even as we enter a bear market, it's not because

of any crypto-specific failures. So, take comfort in knowing that Bitcoin will still be around in

the future, stronger than ever and ready to rally to new all-time highs in the next bull market.

Until then, though, we're probably going to see some crazy downside. So, strap-in folks

because it's going to be a bumpy ride.

All right, that's all from me for today. If you want to see how institutions really feel about

crypto in 2026, then check out the video right over here. And if you want to see what challenges

Bitcoin could face in the year ahead, check out the video right over here. Okay, thank you all

for watching and I'll see you again soon. This is Guy signing off.

Hello, Guy again. Before you go, if you have a moment, please do rate and review us.

It really helps the podcast grow and find new listeners.

Okay, that's all for this episode. Thank you for listening and see you again soon.