Today, after making Trump and his family billions of dollars, Bitcoin is at a critical point. Since reaching a peak of $125,000 in October, it has lost almost 40% and is now valued at around $76,000. Trump wants to turn crypto into digital gold, although for now, real gold remains a safer asset. But the race is still long.
By Massimo GIANNINI
The media has read the evils of Jeffrey Epstein through the wrong lens. As the investigation files are being declassified by the US Department of Justice, the moral of this dark tale is increasingly understood. Not only a murky modern-day Decameron (a reference to the classic work of Italian literature by Giovanni Boccaccio), where bored billionaires and eager politicians vent their erotic manias through a terrifying prostitution ring set up by a wealthy middleman and his “queen”. But also a dark “Romanzo Capitale”, where deviant sex becomes the center of power and blackmail, where politics is intertwined with business and global autocracy merges with digital oligarchy. One of the most unexpected lines of the Epstein files leads directly to cryptocurrencies and Bitcoin, a real passion that the financier-criminal from Brooklyn had long nurtured, before his arrest and subsequent suicide in prison.
The vast body of court documents shows that Epstein was already active in the world of cryptocurrencies fifteen years ago and fully integrated into the circle of the techno-capitalist elite that was shaping the new global economy. In 2013, Boris Nikolic, Bill Gates’ scientific advisor and former director of the MIT Media Lab, sent him a detailed analysis of Bitcoin.
In 2014, Austin Hill, a senior executive at Blockstream, briefed him on recent market developments, including tensions between competing projects Ripple and Stellar. In 2016, Epstein himself suggested to two Saudi interlocutors the creation of a new currency for the Middle East. According to Crypto.news, this digital currency (inspired by Bitcoin) was to develop a Sharia-compliant payment system for use within Muslim communities, with a physical version that would reproduce, in Islamic form, the dollar’s inscription: In God We Trust. The project was so advanced that Epstein wrote that he had discussed it with “the people behind Bitcoin.”
Also in 2016, immediately after Brexit, Epstein tried to connect the threads of the populist revolt against European technocracies with Peter Thiel, who in 2025, with Trump’s reelection, would become his main ideologue and business partner at the Pentagon: “Return to tribalism, opposition to globalization, incredible new alliances…”, he wrote to him by email.
In 2018, Epstein sought advice on cryptocurrency taxation, token transactions (digital assets that are created and run on an existing blockchain), and distribution rules from Steve Bannon, Trump’s “prince of darkness” and supporter of the Sovereign International that has embraced Matteo Salvini and the European far-right. In 2019, Epstein received an email from consultant Richard Kahn describing the “massive controversy surrounding Coinbase” and the acquisition of blockchain analytics company Neutrino. The documents suggest that Epstein was closely following the rise of cryptocurrencies, with a particular focus on regulation. During the same period, he donated $850,000 to MIT to support the DCI digital currency, which was also used to pay Bitcoin Core developers Gavin Andresen and Wladimir Van der Laan. Epstein visited MIT nine times, privately, but his identity was always kept secret.
So, a vast network of interests and businesses, relationships and connections emerges, where today the common thread is clearly visible: the military-industrial-digital combine. Today, after enabling Trump and his family to earn several billion dollars, Bitcoin is at a critical point. Since October, when it reached a peak of 125 thousand dollars, it has lost almost 40% and today it is valued at around 76 thousand. Trump wants to turn crypto into digital gold, although for the moment real gold remains a safer asset. But the race is still long. And, however, it impresses you when you discover that the first to bet on Bitcoin, more than a decade ago, was precisely the pedophile friend of the “Sheriff of Washington”, along with the Masters of the World who frequented his ugly Sodom and Gomorrah. (La Repubblica)