We were gifted by a video interview with G. Edward Griffin, author of "The Creature From Jekyll Island" —one of the few books about the Federal Reserve Banks and Federal Reserve System that is worth reading. Another is "Secrets of the Federal Reserve" by Eustace Mullins.
Strangely, G. Edward Griffin didn't tie the concept of "central" banking down and didn't define it beyond the idea that central banks are all privately owned and working with a government under contracts that allow them to control the country's monetary policies and supplies.
This is a little bit like defining a horse by its hooves.
Controlling monetary policies and monetary supplies is one of the primary jobs of a central bank as opposed to a commercial bank or a trade bank or a retail bank or an investment bank or, or, or.... It's also true that all these so-called central banks which supply all the other banks with money, credit, or both are privately owned and are not public institutions at all.
These are interesting facts and they deserve to be fully known, understood, and deemed important by the Public at Large, but by themselves these facts fail to convey the far larger scope of customary central bank activities and the endless opportunities for unjust enrichment that a central bank contract provides.
In our case the Federal Reserve has haunted our country and its government since Colonial days. Like all other modern central banks that we are familiar with the Federal Reserve is not a single bank, but rather a consortium of private banks that are ultimately in the business of rigging commodities and defining securities and assigning tariffs and duties to be paid as taxes and customs fees.
The member banks of this central bank consortium shift and change over time, but most of these institutions are stable and it's relatively rare to see a major bank member go broke— for example, Lehman Brothers Bank during the 2007 - 2008 meltdown.
Money just happens to be among the most important commodities that central banks rig according to the demands and priorities of the governments that they both serve and ensnare.
The quid pro quo of the central bank is —hey, we are going to do all sorts of illegal and immoral things, but don't worry your little head about it. Just look the other way, members of Congress (or Parliament), and you, too, can be rich, rich, rich.
No need to ask where all the money is coming from. It's coming from the central bank, of course, and being laundered and manipulated and trafficked by central bank agents on a worldwide basis.
If this language seems rather brash it's only because people rarely think about, much less discuss, what central banks do.
Where do central banks come from?
From Prussia. Central banks were created during the tumultuous reign of his grim and royal majesty King Frederick the Great. Note it was "royal majesty" not "Royal Majesty" in his case, because he was literally the king of the land mass known as Prussia and not just the figurehead chief executive of a business calling itself the Kingdom of Prussia.
Frederick the Great was a homosexual who was forever traumatized when his Father had his first love executed in front of his eyes in an effort to make the young prince settle down and tend to the family military business. If he became a warped soul with a plethora of odd fears and passions we can hardly blame him.
Frederick's love of whippets, small, delicate greyhound-like dogs spawned a whippet fashion rage throughout Europe —once he won all the dozens of wars and skirmishes including a war with seven (7) fronts and nearly every other kingdom in Europe standing against Prussia—and with Voltaire's help, he emerged as the most unlikely fashion icon ever in the history of the world.
Imagine a German Liberace who played with cannons instead of pianos.
It is to this bizarre, broken, haunted, restless, nearly insane man that we owe the concept of central banks.
Frederick the Great had odd misgivings about coffee, which was introduced to German society during his Father's reign and which became an increasing focus of one of Frederick's many oddball phobias. He resented the idea of Germans sending their precious silver coins overseas in exchange for coffee beans when their King was fighting, at a minimum, a three front war and barely surviving.
Into the breach strode a strange little Freiherr whose name translates to "Rollingstone"—- who had a solution to the King's dislike of coffee and his need to keep his war efforts funded: a central bank that would relieve Frederick's government of the noisome duty of collecting taxes, and, conveniently levy a stiff import tax (that is, a tariff)) on all coffee and coffee products imported to Germany.
Two problems solved for the price of one, and Frederick the Great was supremely pleased with the invention of a central bank. Once he became a fashion icon all the other royals couldn't wait to create a central bank to do their dirty work, fill their coffers and manipulate their commodity markets to benefit friends and punish political enemies to their heart's content.
Soon every country in Europe had a central bank and advocates of various stripe were crazed to get a central bank established in this country, too. They could never foist it off onto the Americans but they had no trouble convincing our British Territorial Federal Subcontractors who were deeply in debt to their own King and in need of the services a central bank could provide.
The British Territorials (Tories) had borrowed lavishly from their cherished Monarch so that they had the means to fight the American rebels for him. After they lost Yorktown they had to face the immense war debt they owed King George for the privilege of fighting and dying for him in nice uniforms.
A central bank supported by British sympathizers in Europe meant having a grubstake to rebuild, sources of credit even though they were already in over their heads, and a way to secure business investments. The first Bank of the United States was born, a Department of the Treasury was born, and Alexander Hamilton was made famous as a traitor for supporting the hated foreign bank that was enabling the defeated Tories to enjoy such a surfeit of credit.
A central bank.
The first such bank went down in ruins and a second, but like a shark watching its moment, the deceptively named "Federal Reserve" was circling and waiting its opportunity to loan money and central bank services to the American Government.
They had had dealings with the Americans during the Colonial period and entertained debts from the Houses of Burgesses. During the Revolution their French partners extended credit to the Americans. They were well-positioned when the War of 1812 provided another opportunity. During the Civil War they backed Salmon P. Chase, Lincoln's Secretary of the Treasury and were instrumental in negotiating acceptance of Lincoln's "Greenbacks".
The Federal Reserve, an informal consortium of mostly mainland European banks was ready to move in prior to the 1906 bankruptcy of The United States of America, Incorporated, and finally succeeded in 1913 with the secretive Federal Reserve Act making the Federal Reserve cartel empowered to do central bank functions in this country, issue cash and securities for the British Territorial Government, set monetary policies and interest rates, and tax U.S. Citizens using the Internal Revenue Service.
A few years later another service provider doing business as "the IRS" would start direct private tax collections from Municipal citizens of the United States.
All those "Federal Income Taxes" were being imposed by the private "Federal Reserve" bank consortium and collected and enforced by agents hired by the Federal Reserve Banks operating two private foreign concessions—- one income tax collected from the British Territorials as an Estate Taxand another income tax collected from Municipal citizens of the United States by the IRS as a Gift Tax.
This explains the conundrum that baffled generations of Americans who questioned whether the Federal Income Tax was an unlawfully administered direct tax or some kind of excise tax. The answer is — neither.
The Federal Income Tax was always a gift and Estate tax collected as a private contractual obligation of Federal Dual Citizens.
And it was collected by hired agents of the Federal Reserve— the Municipal IRS and Territorial Internal Revenue Service.
The U.S. Congress which is ultimately responsible for abdicating its unique responsibility to levy taxes handed that duty over to the Federal Reserve cartel. And they get a healthy kick-backed profit share.
This would have been questionable at best if the Federal Reserve had limited its activities to actual Federal Dual Citizens who would have been paying a payroll kick-back tax as a condition of employment, but deliberately scheming to impose this "private" tax on the earnings of average Americans is a bridge too far.
The Federal Reserve Banks, their collaborators in the British Territorial U.S. Congress, and their minions working as Agents for the IRS/Internal Revenue Service are all guilty of racketeering and collusion and unlawful confiscation of American property assets and American labor resources.
The judges working for the UNITED STATES TAX COURT and the UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURTS and United States District Courts have aided and abetted and acted as accomplices to this criminal conspiracy against the American people whom they have deliberately impersonated and misrepresented and defrauded via crimes of personage and barratry.
And this is just one particularly egregious example of how foreign interests organized as central banks have acted in gross breach of trust and criminal undisclosed self-interest against their American employers who are all owed "good faith service".
The Federal Reserve crossed the line and is a crime syndicate by definition, while their Agents at the Department of Justice and manning the Field Offices of the IRS and Internal Revenue Service have been misdirected to bully, threaten, and attack average Americans who never owed these cretins a dime.
There are many other salacious crimes that have been carried out by these banks, their collaborators and henchmen, but their implementation and enforcement of their corporation's Sixteenth (By-Law) Amendment on average American workers and unincorporated businesses is enough — all by itself — to justify the arrest of the Perpetrators, the liquidation of these banks, the liquidation of these courts, and the permanent abolition of these "services".
The so-called Sixteenth Amendment was never ratified by our States of the Union, making every improper act of enforcement against average Americans a crime and conspiracy against our Government and the Constitutions and the Constitutional processes we set forth and ordained for these employees.
Mr. Trump had better move to take these actions liquidating the offenders and arresting the Perpetrators sooner rather than later, or his Administration will risk looking like an accomplice to these continued outrageous crimes.
Issued by:
Anna Maria Riezinger -Fiduciary
The United States of America
In care of: Box 520994
Big Lake, Alaska
May 8th 2025
See this article and over 5300 others on Anna's website here: www.annavonreitz.com
To support this work look for the Donate button on this website.
🇺🇸 President Trump says there will be no income tax "at some point in the not-too-distant future."
As I have been telling you for a few years now, ALL Tax has ALWAYS been voluntary, since WWII donations started.
He has to do it this way so there isn't a revolution on the government's hands. If THEY just came out and told you it has always been voluntary, the people would rise up and take to the streets. There would be mass chaos. -Crypto Michael ⚡️The Dinarian
Cointelegraph’s live-blog snapshot (edition: 27 Nov 2025) packs the market-moving headlines, on-chain sparks and policy sound-bites that ricocheted through crypto in 24 hrs – from a surprise Basel stablecoin concession to a record open-interest print on BTC futures.
🔑 Key Headlines
🔹️ Basel Boost: BCBS officially dropped the punitive 1 250 % risk-weight for bank-held stablecoins (Tether, USDC) and replaced it with a tiered 20 %–100 % framework – unleashing a 2.4 B intraday rally in stablecoin issuer tokens and bank-centric DeFi plays.
🔹️ BTC Open Interest Record: Aggregate perpetual & futures OI hit 53.8 B (Deribit + CME + Binance) – 7 % above April peak – as whales added 1.1 B long exposure ahead of Friday’s 0-DTE expiry; funding flipped +18 % annualised.
🔹️ Nasdaq Tokenized Equities Live: Nasdaq’s ATS-Clearing hybrid went live with 3 private-company tokens; first trade executed 4.3 M face value in T+0 settlement, marking the first regulated U.S. exchange to custody & ...
👉 Coinbase just launched an AI agent for Crypto Trading
Custom AI assistants that print money in your sleep? 🔜
The future of Crypto x AI is about to go crazy.
👉 Here’s what you need to know:
💠 'Based Agent' enables creation of custom AI agents
💠 Users set up personalized agents in < 3 minutes
💠 Equipped w/ crypto wallet and on-chain functions
💠 Capable of completing trades, swaps, and staking
💠 Integrates with Coinbase’s SDK, OpenAI, & Replit
👉 What this means for the future of Crypto:
1. Open Access: Democratized access to advanced trading
2. Automated Txns: Complex trades + streamlined on-chain activity
3. AI Dominance: Est ~80% of crypto 👉txns done by AI agents by 2025
🚨 I personally wouldn't bet against Brian Armstrong and Jesse Pollak.
👉 Coinbase just launched an AI agent for Crypto Trading
👉 Coinbase just launched an AI agent for Crypto Trading
LATEST: 🚨 The official Pepe memecoin site has reportedly been compromised to redirect users to malicious links containing Inferno Drainer code, with Blockaid warning users to stay clear until the issue is resolved. https://x.com/CoinMarketCap/status/1996648256357408978
🚨 UPDATE: CFTC NOW PERMITS SPOT CRYPTO TRADING ON REGISTERED EXCHANGES 🚨
In a landmark first for U.S. digital-asset regulation, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) has officially green-lighted spot crypto trading on federally registered exchanges, starting with Chicago-based Bitnomial this week. The move brings Bitcoin, Ether and other commodity-tokens under the same century-old regulatory umbrella that governs U.S. futures, options and swaps—complete with leverage, unified margin and clearing-house protection.
🔑 Key Breakthroughs
🔹️ Historic First: Bitnomial’s Designated Contract Market (DCM) and Derivatives Clearing Organization (DCO) will list spot BTC, ETH, XRP, SOL side-by-side with futures & perps—single portfolio margin, net settlement, T+0 delivery.
🔹️ Federal Umbrella: All orders—retail or institutional—clear through a CFTC-supervised clearing house, eliminating the patch-work of state money-transmitter licences that has kept U.S. leverage platforms ...
XDC Network's acquisition of Contour Network marks a silent shift to connect the digital trade infrastructure to real-time, tokenized settlement rails.
In a world where cross-border payments still take days and trap trillions in idle liquidity, integrating Contour’s trade workflows with XDC Network Blockchains' ISO 20022 financial messaging standard to bridge TradFi and Web3 in Trade Finance.
The Current State of Cross-Border Trade Settlements
Cross-border payments remain one of the most inefficient parts of global finance. For decades, companies have inter-dependency with banks and their correspondent banks across the world, forcing them to maintain trillions of dollars in pre-funded nostro and vostro balances — the capital that sits idle while transactions crawl across borders.
Traditional settlement is slow, often 1–5 days, and often with ~2-3% in FX and conversion fees. For every hour a corporation can’t access its own cash increases the cost of financing, tightens liquidity that could be used for other purposes, which in turn slows economic activity.
Before SWIFT, payments were fully manual. Intermediary banks maintained ledgers, and reconciliation across multiple institutions limited speed and volume.
SWIFT reshaped global payments by introducing a secure, standardized messaging infrastructure through ISO 20022 - which quickly became the language of money for 11,000+ institutions in 200 countries.
But SWIFT only fixed the messaging — not the movement. Actual value still moves through slow, capital-intensive correspondent chains.
Regulated and Compliant Stablecoin such as USDC (Circle) solves the part SWIFT never could: instant, on-chain settlement.
Stablecoin Settlement revamping Trade and Tokenization
Stablecoin such as USDC is a digital token pegged to the US Dollar, still the most widely used currency for trade, enabling the movement of funds instantly 24*7 globally - transparently, instantly, and without the need for any intermediaries and the need to lock in trillions of dollars of idle cash.
Tokenized settlement replaces multi-day reconciliation with on-chain finality, reducing:
Dependency on intermediaries
Operational friction
Trillions locked in idle liquidity
For corporates trapped in long working capital cycles, this is transformative.
Digital dollars like USDC make the process simple:
Fiat → Stablecoin → On-Chain Transfer → Fiat
This hybrid model is already widely used across remittances, payouts, and treasury flows.
But one critical piece of global commerce is still lagging:
👉 Trade finance.
The Missing link is still Trade Finance Infrastructure.
While payments innovation has raced ahead, trade finance infrastructure hasn’t kept up. Document flows, letters of credit, and supply-chain financing remain siloed, paper-heavy, and operationally outdated.
This is exactly where the next breakthrough will happen - and why the recent XDC Network acquisition of Contour is a silent revolution.
It transforms to a new era of trade-driven liquidity through an end-to-end digital trade from shipping docs to payment confirmation – one infrastructure that powers all.
The breakthrough won’t come from payments alone — it will come from connecting trade finance to real-time settlement rails.
The XDC + Contour Shift: A Silent Revolution
Contour already connects global banks and corporates through digital LCs and digitized trade workflows.
XDC Blockchain brings a settlement layer built for speed, tokenization, and institutional-grade interoperability and ISO 20022 messaging compatibility
Contour’s digital letter of credit workflows will be integrated with XDC’s blockchain network to streamline trade documentation and settlement.
Together, they form the first end-to-end digital trade finance network linking:
Documentation → Validation → Settlement all under a single infrastructure.
XDC Ventures (XVC.TECH) is launching a Stable-Coin Lab to work with financial institutions on regulated stablecoin pilots for trade to deepen institutional trade-finance integration through launch of pilots with banks and corporates for regulated stable-coin issuance and settlement.
Inside The Deal That Made Polymarket’s Founder One Of The Youngest Billionaires On Earth🌍
One year ago, the FBI raided Polymarket founder Shayne Coplan’s apartment. Now, the college dropout is a billionaire at age 27.
In July, Jeffrey Sprecher, the 70-year-old billionaire CEO of Intercontinental Exchange, the parent company of the New York Stock Exchange, sat at Manhatta, an upscale restaurant in the financial district overlooking the sprawling New York City skyline from the 60th floor. As a sommelier weaved through tables pouring wine, in walked Shayne Coplan—in a T-shirt and jeans, clutching a plastic water bottle and a paper bag with a bagel he’d picked up en route. Sprecher chuckles as he recalls his first impression of the boyish, eccentric entrepreneur: “An old bald guy that works at the New York Stock Exchange, where we require that you wear a suit and tie, next to a mop-headed guy in a T-shirt that's 27.” But Sprecher was fascinated by Polymarket, Coplan’s blockchain-based prediction market, and after dinner, he made his move: “I asked Shayne if he would consider selling us his company.”
Prediction markets like Polymarket let thousands of ordinary people bet on future events—the unemployment rate, say, or when BitCoin will hit an all-time high. In aggregate, prediction market bets have proven to be something of a crystal ball with the wisdom of the crowd often proving itself more prescient than expert opinion. For instance, Polymarket punters predicted that Trump would prevail in the 2024 presidential election, when many national pundits were sure that Kamala Harris would win.
Coplan initially turned down Sprecher’s buyout offer. But discussions led to negotiations and eventually a deal. In October, Intercontinental announced it had invested $2 billion for an up to 25% stake in the company, bringing the young solo founder the balance he was looking for. “We're consumer, we’re viral, we're culture. They’re finance, they’re headless and they’re infrastructure,” Coplan tells Forbes in a recent interview.
At the same time, Coplan announced investments from other billionaires including Figma’s Dylan Field, Zynga’s Mark Pincus, Uber’s Travis Kalanick and hedge fund manager Glenn Dubin. A longtime Red Hot Chili Peppers fan, Coplan even convinced lead singer Anthony Kiedis to invest after a mutual acquaintance brought the musician to Coplan’s apartment one day. “He's buzzing my door, and I’m like, ‘holy shit,'” Coplan recalls, his bright blue eyes widening. “I love their music. A lot of the inspiration [for my work] comes from the music that I listen to.”
Thanks to the deals, Polymarket’s valuation quickly shot to $9 billion, making the 2025 Under 30 alum the world’s youngest self-made billionaire, with an estimated 11% stake worth $1 billion. His reign was short: twenty days later, he was overtaken as the youngest by the three 22-year-old founders of AI startup Mercor.
Young entrepreneurs are minting ten-figure fortunes faster than ever. In addition to the Mercor trio and Coplan, 15 other Under 30 alumni—including ScaleAI cofounder Lucy Guo, Reddit’s Steve Huffman and Cursor’s cofounders—became billionaires this year, while Guo’s cofounder Alexandr Wang and Robinhood’s Vlad Tenev (both former Under 30 honorees) regained their billionaire status after having fallen out of the ranks.
The budding billionaire has long been fascinated by markets and tech. When he was just 14, Coplan emailed the regional Securities and Exchange Commission office to ask how to create new marketplaces. “I did not get a response, but it’s a really funny email,” he says, grinning playfully as he thinks of his younger self. “It just shows that this stuff takes over a decade of percolating in your mind.”
Two years later, Coplan showed up at the offices of internet startup Genius uninvited after multiple emails of his asking for an internship went ignored. At age 16—at least a decade younger than anyone in that office—he secured his first job after making a memorable impression with his “wild curls” and “encyclopedic knowledge of billionaire tech entrepreneurs.” “If he chooses to become a tech entrepreneur, which seems likely, I have no doubt that we’ll be seeing his name again in the press before long,” Chris Glazek, his manager at the time, wrote in Coplan’s college recommendation letter.
Coplan went on to study computer science at NYU, but dropped out in 2017 to work on various crypto projects that never took off. In 2020, he founded Polymarket to create a solution to the “rampant misinformation” he saw in the world: The company’s first market allowed users to bet on when New York City would reopen amid the pandemic. He soon expanded into elections and pop culture happenings, among other events.
But it didn’t take long for the company to butt heads with regulators. In January 2022, Polymarket paid a $1.4 million fine to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission for offering unregistered markets. It was also ordered to block all U.S. users, but activity on Polymarket skyrocketed particularly during the 2024 U.S. presidential election, with bets totaling $3.6 billion. A week after the election, the FBI raided Coplan's apartment and seized his devices as part of an investigation into a possible violation of this agreement. Shortly after, Coplan posted on his X account that he saw the raid as “a last-ditch effort” from the Biden administration “to go after companies they deem to be associated with political opponents.”
In July, the Department of Justice and CFTC dropped the investigations—after which Sprecher reached out to Coplan for dinner—and less than a week later, Polymarket announced it had acquired CFTC-licensed derivatives exchange QCX to prepare for a compliant U.S. launch. QCX applied to be a federally-registered exchange in 2022—an application that was left dormant for three years before receiving approval less than two weeks before the acquisition was announced. When asked about the timing of the deal, Coplan points to CFTC acting chairwoman Caroline Pham, who President Trump tapped to lead the agency in January. “Caroline deserves a lot of credit for getting every single license that had been paused for no reason approved, as acting chairwoman in less than a year,” he says. Coplan had realized an acquisition might be the only way for Polymarket to legally operate in the U.S. as early as 2021 due to the lengthy federal approval process, a source familiar with the deal told Forbes.
Just two months after the acquisition and days after Donald Trump Jr. joined Polymarket’s advisory board, the company received federal approval to launch in the U.S. (Trump Jr. has also served as a strategic advisor to Polymarket’s main competitor Kalshi since January.)
Polymarket’s rapid rise has drawn critics. Dennis Kelleher, co-founder and CEO of Washington-based financial advocacy group Better Markets, told Forbes in an email that the current administration’s deregulation around prediction markets has unlocked a regulatory “loophole” to enable “unregulated gambling” under the CFTC, “which has zero expertise, capacity or resources to regulate and police these markets.” Kelleher added that with backing from the Trump family “who are directly trying to profit on this new gambling den… the massive deregulation and crypto hysteria will almost certainly end badly for the American people.”
Investors and businesses are scrambling to seize the moment of deregulation. “We had opportunities to invest in events markets earlier, but there was a lot of risk,” Sprecher says, listing the regulatory changes in favor of crypto and prediction markets under the current administration. “This was the moment to invest if we wanted to still be early in the space.”
In the last few months, Trump’s Truth Social and sportsbook FanDuel, as well as cryptocurrency exchanges Crypto.com, Coinbase and Gemini all announced their own plans to offer prediction markets. Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev said prediction markets, which were integrated into its platform in March, were helping drive record activity for the retail brokerage in its third quarter earnings call.
“People are starting to realize right now that the opportunities are endless,” says Dubin, the billionaire hedge fund veteran who invested in Polymarket earlier this year. He points to sports betting companies, which have been regulated by states as gambling activity and taxed accordingly. States like New York can tax up to 51% of sportsbooks’ revenue, but federally-regulated prediction markets can bypass state laws, avoiding taxes and operating in all 50 states. With the realization that prediction markets could upend the sports betting industry—which brought in $13.7 billion in revenue in 2024—businesses are quickly jumping on board despite pushback from state gambling regulators. In October, both Polymarket and Kalshi secured partnerships with sportsbook PrizePicks and the National Hockey League, and Polymarket announced exclusive partnerships with sportsbook DraftKings and the Ultimate Fighting Championship.
The disruption won’t be limited to sports betting. Alongside its investment, Intercontinental’s tens of thousands of institutional clients including large hedge funds and over 750 third-party providers of data will soon have access to Polymarket data, as it gets integrated into Intercontinental’s products such as indices to better inform investment decisions. It also hopes to work with Polymarket to work on initiatives around tokenization—or converting financial assets into digital tokens on blockchain technology—to allow traders on Intercontinental’s exchanges to trade more flexibly at all hours of the day, Sprecher says. What’s more, in November, Google Finance announced it would integrate Polymarket and Kalshi data into its search results, while Yahoo Finance also announced an exclusive partnership with Polymarket.
Despite flashy investors, partnerships and a record $2.4 billion of trading volume in November, Polymarket has yet to launch in the U.S. or turn a profit. Coplan and his investors have hinted at ways the company could make money one day—selling its data, charging fees to users, launching a cryptocurrency token (similar to Ethereum or Bitcoin)—but decline to confirm any specifics. For now, the only thing that’s certain is the bet Coplan is making on himself. “Going for it and having it not pan out is an infinitely better outcome than living your life as a what if,” he says.
Standing across from the New York Stock Exchange building, Coplan tilts his head up as he watches a massive banner with Polymarket’s logo get hoisted onto the exterior of the building. It’s been five years since founding. One year since the FBI raid. He’s taking it all in. “Against all odds,” the bright blue banner reads, rippling in the wind alongside three American flags protruding from the building.
Epstein-Linked Emails Expose Funding Ties to Bitcoin Core Development — Here Is What the Documents Reveal
Newly released emails show Jeffrey Epstein helped fund MIT’s Digital Currency Initiative, which supported Bitcoin Core development.
The documents also confirm that Leon Black donated to MIT’s Media Lab through Epstein-directed channels.
The revelations reshape part of Bitcoin’s early institutional funding history and highlight long-hidden influence from controversial donors.
Newly unsealed emails from the House Oversight Committee have shed fresh light on Jeffrey Epstein’s hidden financial influence inside MIT’s Media Lab— and more importantly, how some of that money flowed into Bitcoin Core development. The correspondence reveals that Joichi Ito, then-director of the MIT Media Lab, relied on Epstein-connected “gift funds” to rapidly launch the Digital Currency Initiative (DCI) in 2015, the research hub that became one of the primary sources of funding for Bitcoin’s core developers.
Emails Show Epstein-Connected Money Helped Launch MIT’s Digital Currency Initiative
In the newly surfaced emails, Ito directly thanked Epstein for the financial help that allowed MIT to “move quickly and win this round,” referring to the formation of DCI — a program explicitly designed to provide long-term support for Bitcoin Core contributors after the collapse of the Bitcoin Foundation. Ito’s forwarded message to Epstein described how the foundation’s implosion left core developers without stable funding, creating an opening for MIT to bring them under its umbrella.
He explained that three major developers — including Wladimir van der Laan and Cory Fields — agreed to join MIT, calling it “a big win for us.” The email also highlighted early support from prominent academics, including cryptographer Ron Rivest and IMF economist Simon Johnson. Epstein simply replied: “gavin is clever.”
Funding Numbers Reveal a Much Larger Financial Trail
MIT publicly claimed that Epstein donated $850,000 to the institution, with $525,000 flowing to the Media Lab. But journalist Ronan Farrow later reported the true figure was closer to $7.5 million — including a $5 million anonymous donation connected to Epstein associate Leon Black. The new emails appear to confirm that Black not only donated, but did so through Epstein’s direction.
One email from Ito to Epstein reads: “We were able to keep the Leon Black money, but the $25K from your foundation is getting bounced by MIT back to ASU.”
Epstein responded: “No problem — trying to get more black for you.”
The documents reveal Epstein’s influence reached deeper into Bitcoin circles than previously acknowledged, even including early conversations with Brock Pierce — another figure with documented ties to both Epstein and controversy surrounding early crypto foundations.
MIT’s Internal Concerns and the Fallout
The emails also expose MIT’s internal unease around anonymous or reputationally risky donations. After the scandal broke, Ito resigned in 2019. MIT later tightened donation policies, warning that “everything becomes public” eventually — a statement that now seems prophetic given this week’s disclosures.
Developers like Wladimir van der Laan say they were unaware of the extent of Epstein’s involvement and noted that DCI’s funding transparency “was not great back in the day.” The Media Lab and DCI declined to comment.
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Welcome to the Dinarian on Locals, where we discuss everything blockchain and digital asset related. We are here to learn from one another as this is a new and ever evolving space. Please post and share what you like, but be respectful to others as they are here to learn as well.
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