Newly disclosed emails from the estate of Jeffrey Epstein show that the late financier helped underwrite MIT’s Digital Currency Initiative (DCI) in 2015, money that, at least in part, supported work on Bitcoin Core, the reference implementation of the Bitcoin protocol (not the Bitcoin protocol itself).
The correspondence, released this week by the U.S. House Oversight Committee, links Epstein and his associate Leon Black more directly to MIT Media Lab funding than previous public investigations had confirmed.
“Used gift funds to underwrite this”
Ten days after the DCI was launched in April 2015, then–MIT Media Lab director Joichi Ito emailed Epstein under the subject line “Digital Currency Initiative.”
“Used gift funds to underwrite this which allowed us to move quickly and win this round. Thanks,” Ito wrote.
He then forwarded a long internal message explaining how MIT had moved into the vacuum left by the implosion of the Bitcoin Foundation, the non-profit that previously paid several Bitcoin Core maintainers.
In the forwarded note, Ito describes Bitcoin’s structure (five core developers and roughly a hundred contributors) and spells out why securing their salaries mattered for MIT:
key developers Gavin (Gavin Andresen), Wladimir (Wladimir J. van der Laan) and Cory (Cory Fields) had been funded by the Bitcoin Foundation;
the foundation had “blew up” after being declared “bankrupt” by a board member;
“many organisations scrambled to step into the vacuum… and ‘take control’ of the developers”;
MIT “moved quickly” and the three developers “decided to join the Media Lab,” which Ito called “a big win for us.”
Ito also highlighted that the move enjoyed broad MIT backing, citing cryptographer Ron Rivest, former IMF chief economist Simon Johnson, and Media Lab faculty including Sandy Pentland and Andy Lippman.
Epstein’s reply was brief and unsettlingly casual:
“gavin is clever”
Bitcoin developers say they didn’t know
Speaking to The Rage, Bitcoin Core maintainer Wladimir van der Laan said he was unaware Epstein’s money was involved, stressing that DCI funding came with “no strings attached whatsoever.” He also noted that DCI’s internal funding flows were “not very transparent, definitely not back in the day.”
🚨NEW: EMAILS REVEAL JEFFREY EPSTEIN MONEY FINANCED BITCOIN CORE DEVELOPMENT
“Used gift funds to underwrite this which allowed us to move quickly and win this round. Thanks,” Media Lab Director Joi Ito wrote Epstein in an email titled DCI.
Fields did not respond to a request for comment by The Rage before publication.
DCI was founded with the stated aim of providing “stable and sustainable funding for long-term Bitcoin Core developers.” The new emails don’t show Epstein dictating technical decisions, but they do confirm that donations routed through him helped bankroll the group that, at the time, effectively employed several of Bitcoin’s most influential contributors.
A darker backdrop: Bitcoin Foundation and Brock Pierce
Ito’s email frames MIT’s move as opportunistic but benign: step into a gap, secure developer salaries, and offer a neutral, academic home.
The hole left by the Bitcoin Foundation was anything but clean. Before declaring bankruptcy, the organisation suffered mass resignations after it confirmed Brock Pierce (former child actor and co-founder of the Digital Entertainment Network [DEN]) as a director. Pierce and his DEN co-founders had faced civil lawsuits in the early 2000s accusing them of sexual abuse of underage employees and other misconduct; one co-founder, Mark Collins-Rector, was later criminally indicted for transporting minors for sexual exploitation.
Pierce has long been rumoured to move in overlapping circles with Epstein. According to the Oversight Committee documents, Epstein discussed Bitcoin with Pierce at his Manhattan home as early as 2015. The new emails therefore tie together three threads that many in the community had preferred to see as separate: Bitcoin Core funding, Epstein’s philanthropy and the post-Foundation power struggle around core development.
Leon Black’s role confirmed
Ito’s downfall at MIT in 2019 centred on speculation that a $5 million anonymous donation to the Media Lab had been made by private-equity billionaire and Epstein associate Leon Black. At the time, MIT disclosed $850,000 in donations directly from Epstein, of which $525,000 went to the Media Lab, while an independent investigation described references to Epstein near the DCI as “cursory.”
The new emails fill in some of the blanks. In February 2019, Ito wrote to Epstein:
“Just to let you know. We were able to keep the Leon Black money, but the $25K from your foundation is getting bounced by MIT back to ASU.”
Epstein’s response:
“No problem – Trying to get more black for you.”
The exchange strongly suggests that Epstein was not only donating himself but facilitating Black’s gifts to the Media Lab.
Black, the former CEO of Apollo Global Management, stepped down after revelations that he had paid Epstein around $158 million for “tax and estate planning” advice. He was succeeded at Apollo by former SEC chair Jay Clayton, who later became the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, the office that has since brought high-profile cases against privacy projects such as Samourai Wallet and Tornado Cash.
MIT’s risk threshold
An internal 2017 memo from MIT senior vice president Greg Morgan, also cited in the Oversight material, warned that anonymous gifts above certain levels posed serious reputational risk:
“Let’s assume that eventually everything becomes public, one way or another,” – Morgan wrote.
He suggested MIT would be “much more comfortable” with anonymous donations in the $1–2 million range and viewed amounts under $5 million per year as the rough upper bound if anonymity was to be preserved.
Despite that guidance, Ito continued to cultivate Epstein and donors linked to him until investigative reporting by Ronan Farrow in 2019 forced the relationship into the open. Ito resigned shortly afterwards.
The MIT Media Lab and the Digital Currency Initiative did not respond to new requests for comment by The Rage on the latest emails.
What this means for Bitcoin’s “neutrality” story
For Bitcoin’s code and network, these revelations change little in a technical sense; consensus rules aren’t rewritten by donor lists. But they do complicate a favoured narrative: that Bitcoin’s reference implementation emerged from a purely grassroots, cypherpunk funding model.
The reality, once again, looks messier. In 2015, as Bitcoin Foundation money evaporated under the weight of its own governance and reputational failures, MIT stepped in with a package underwritten (at least in part) by Jeffrey Epstein and his circle. Developers say the funding did not buy influence. Still, the optics are stark: the world’s flagship “neutral”, non-state monetary project quietly relied on money from one of the most toxic figures in modern finance.
If there’s a lesson here for Bitcoin and the wider open-source ecosystem, it’s not that core development is captured, but that funding transparency matters as much as open code. Donors eventually come to light. The only real choice is whether communities find out on their own timelines, or in someone else’s leaked inbox.
Disclosure: This article is for information purposes only and does not constitute investment, legal, tax, or moral advice. Do your own research.
