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The Epstein Chronicles
Jeffrey Epstein, Treasury Officials, and the Early Cryptocurrency Questions Around Iran (Part 2) (5/12/26)
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A recent investigation by https://www.dropsitenews.com?utm_source=chatgpt.com claims that Jeffrey Epstein was consulted by officials within the U.S. Treasury Department during the Obama administration as policymakers grappled with the growing role of...
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What's up, everyone? And welcome to another episode of the Epstein Chronicles. In this episode, we're going to pick up where we left off with the article from Drop Site News that was authored by Murtaza Hussain and Ryan Grimm. Epstein's involvement with national security officials during the negotiations with Iran coincided with his own deepening interest in the software engineers researching cryptocurrency. Oh, I wonder why. Can you imagine a guy like Jeffrey Epstein with crypto at his disposal? You thought it was hard to find his money previously? Boy, you have no chance when it comes to crypto. Bitcoin was originally launched in 2009 with the goal of building a payment system that could operate outside the reach of central banks and state financial intermediaries. Satoshi Nakamoto, the pseudonym created of Bitcoin, retired on April 26, 2011, ceasing communication with developers and effectively disappearing. The next day, Gavin Andresen, Bitcoin's lead maintainer, announced plans to discuss bitcoin at CIA headquarters. Oh, I'm shocked, very shocked that the CIA was involved. And I'm very shocked that Jeffrey Epstein was probably the liaison. Epstein wanted to meet Andreessen and other members of the bitcoin team ahead of the CIA meeting. With the help of venture capitalist Jason Calacanis, Epstein contacted Amir Taqi, a British Iranian hacker. Soon after Taki's launch of Britcoin, the first cryptocurrency Exchange in the UK on June 12, 2011, Epstein emailed Taki a warning. Amir, the bitcoin idea is brilliant, Epstein wrote, but I suggest some serious downsides. As I'm sure you're aware, Epstein later met with Taki's business partner to discuss fraud and crime on crypto exchanges. Well, Jeffrey Epstein's favorite word next to molestation was fraud, so that doesn't shock me. The potential illicit uses of cryptocurrency quickly materialized. In 2011, American hacker Ross Ulbricht launched Silk Road, a darknet marketplace that used bitcoin to facilitate anonymous drug trafficking and other illegal services. Ulbricht was arrested in the science fiction section of the San Francisco public library on Oct. 1, 2013, after investigators linked his pseudonymous Dread Pirate Roberts to his personal email. The FBI seized the Silk Road domain and shut down the website the day after Ulbricht's arrest. And we know that Ulbricht has been pardoned by Trump, but that whole investigation was a bit tilted. And I think that Ross Ulbricht caught a bad deal. He should have did some time, no doubt about it, but the things they were, you Know, trying to accuse him of. They didn't make that case to me. Epstein and his circle of friends were closely following the Silk Road investigation. Boris Nikolic, chief advisor to Bill Gates, sent the news to Epstein shortly after Ulbricht's arrest. So sad that he made such a stupid mistake, Nikolic wrote. A lot of people are going to get indicted, Epstein replied. Or not. I mean, nobody big. Of course, Ross Ulbricht ended up going to prison, but that was pretty much where it ended up. A few months later, Epstein began brainstorming with Italian hacker Vincenzo Iazo about how to make digital currency palatable to banks and governments while preserving the privacy of crypto transactions. That's what it's all about. Epstein was looking for ways to avoid taxes, to avoid paying any money, to avoid giving back the money he stole, basically. So everything about him was a hustle, a scheme, a plot, and a maneuver to try and do that. The moment that you remove anonymity from Bitcoin, there is a significant privacy problem. I also warned Epstein, meaning that now everyone knows that you buy and sell through Bitcoin, its advertisers, among others. Sweetest dream, but probably your worst nightmare. An FBI informant later alleged that Iazo was Epstein's personal hacker who sold cyber weapons to terrorists and governments alike. Iazo did not respond to requests for comment. Epstein was a lone predator. Guys, come on. All this talk about other people that were helping him, assisting him, around him, nothing more than noise, Just a bunch of nonsense. Imagine trying to pitch that to people with a straight face. Imagine trying to tell people that this is a hoax. It is just absurd, and I have no idea how they're getting away with it. Before meeting with treasury state officials In August of 2014, Epstein notified various leaders in tech and finance about his upcoming trip, including Brock Pierce, co founder of Tether, a stablecoin whose value is pegged to the US dollar. Tether was launched one month prior to Epstein's visit, originally named RealCoin as a cryptocurrency token, purportedly backed one to one with fiat currency reserves. Look, I don't know anything about any of that, to tell you the truth. All sounds like a hustle to me. Why don't we just back up our currency with gold, you know, like we always have? But sure, let's get creative, right? And they'll tell you that, you know, it's for the betterment of mankind, but really, it's for the betterment of them. Tether, whose market capitalization was estimated at 187 billion as of late 2025 has grown to become structurally important to the global economy, surpassing Bitcoin as the most traded cryptocurrency in the world and powering global financial network that also supports money laundering and organized crime. To a Jeffrey Epstein's other favorite things, by the way. As Tehran seeks to escape the stranglehold of US sanctions regime which restricts Iranian entities from accessing dollars for international trade, the Iranian government has accumulated huge quantities of Tether, hundreds of millions of dollars of which were targeted for seizure this April by the Treasury Department as part of its ongoing economic fury pressure campaign. Like all this pressure on Iran, all these talks, all this bombing and what's been accomplished, the same wild people are still running the country, talking the same wild. And here we are paying six bucks a gallon for gas. I mean, we just filled the car up yesterday, it was like 85 bucks. And I mean, if you work far away from where you live, you're talking about spending 300, $350 on gas. And for what? What did we get out of it, geopolitically speaking? So far, not much. And it makes you wonder what exactly was the motivation behind the whole entire operation? That same month as the launch of Tether, Epstein began investing in Bitcoin's core infrastructure. On July 15, Epstein and Ito made a $500,000 seed investment in Blockstream. After inviting the blockchain startup co founders to Little St. James Island. Blockstream helped shift the Bitcoin ecosystem from peer to peer electronic cash, as originally envisioned in Nakamoto's 2008 whitepaper, to a global reserve currency and settlement layer for tokenized financial assets like Stablecoins. When Epstein invested in Blockstream, one Bitcoin traded at roughly $600. So basically what we're saying here folks, is that Bitcoin was created for the Epstein class. And look, there's no doubt some regular people have been along for the ride, but the whole entire idea was to make sure that this money stayed in the shadows. And if there was a way to hide money, if there was a way to launder money, Epstein was going to find it, whether it was high end art or Bitcoin. Four days after his treasury visit on August 25, Epstein helped coordinate an October follow up meeting between Ann Shira Wall, work Senior Counselor for Strategic Policy in the Office of Terrorist Financing and financial crimes and MIT's EDO. Epstein wanted Ito to loop him in to the MIT treasury talks. And he coached Ito to inform the treasury officials that he and Epstein share one mind on their views of crypto regulation. And when we talk about enablers and people that help build Epstein, people like IDO are exactly who I'm talking about. Do you think these doors open for Epstein without people like ido? Of course not. What it does is it gives Epstein a veneer of respectability, and that opens the door. I also shared information with Epstein to help him prepare for the talks with treasury officials, sending them an example of the Treasury Department seizing money from Denmark to Germany for a batch of Cuban cigars under the Terrorist Finance Tracking Program on the grounds that the transaction violated the US Embargo against Cuba. Think about the endless possibilities for practical jokes in this area, iazo wrote. Let me translate that for you. What he means is the world is an oyster and it's ready to be plucked. Epstein had a keen eye for downstream political implications of new technologies, and he surrounded himself with key figures in the fields of artificial intelligence and genetic research. Recognizing promising opportunities in cryptocurrency, he activated many of the same political, academic and research networks to take early advantage of blockchain based financial channels. In September 2014, Tether Holdings Limited was formally incorporated in the British Virgin Islands. Weeks later, shortly before the treasury follow up call, Epstein emailed his U.S. virgin Islands attorney Eric Kellerhals, asking her to amend banking certificates so that we can bank Bitcoin. Epstein's fingerprints are all over it. It's pretty disturbing, and when you look at all the people that were involved in the creation of Bitcoin, it makes me want to run even that much further away from crypto. After a conference call between Epstein and Edo and wallwork on October 15, Iazo wrote an email remarking on the irony that Epstein, an expert at hiding money, was pushing for more regulation and treasury for more openness. The conversation reminded Iazo of an old Soviet joke about two propaganda newspapers in Pravda. Truth there is no news. In ivestia News there is no truth. Look, the fertile ground where Epstein operated was confusion. That's where he was at his best, and that's where he did his most dangerous work. The first Tether stablecoins were issued that same month, and Epstein quickly got to work cultivating Pierce's project. On October 28, he helped connect Pierce to Larry Summers, Treasury Secretary under Bill Clinton, an economic adviser to the Obama administration, to assist with setting up the dollar token rail. A few days later, on November 2, he connected Summers to Ito to support the Bitcoin initiative at mit. It's all connected, and if you were wondering why they didn't want rico, folks, how much more Evidence do you need? The FBI's seizure of silk Road Marketplace was followed by a regulatory crackdown in China, blocking yuan deposits to crypto exchanges. In early 2014, Mount Gox, the biggest bitcoin exchange in the world at the time, halted trading and withdrawals. The company claimed that over 850,000 bitcoins had been stolen, worth more than 100 billion at Bitcoin's peak last year. The convergence of crisis caused the bitcoin price to collapse. Yeah, it dropped like a rock, right? And now I know it's back up to what, 70 something thousand, but it's pretty volatile. Epstein and his circle took advantage of the crisis to push for a friendly regulatory regime for digital currency. After the fall of Mt. Gox, Coinbase, a regulated U.S. crypto exchange, differentiated itself as a secure, compliant intermediary. In December of 2014, Peirce invited Epstein to join a fundraising series for Coinbase, describing the investment opportunity as the most platinum plated deal in the space. Peirce also introduced Epstein to Coinbase co founder Fred Ersum, and they made plans to meet. Epstein ultimately invested 3 million in Coinbase series C round through a Virgin islands entity. By 2015, the network Epstein had connected was crystallizing into real institutional collaboration. Walwerk invited ito to a January 2015 virtual currency event at treasury. Jointly hosted by the Office of Domestic Finance and the Office of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence. The private event was designed to educate senior government officials about virtual currency and identify areas of regulatory uncertainty as the industry matured. Oh, they've done a great job at that, huh? What they really mean is how to find loopholes so they can benefit. The crashing Bitcoin price created an existential crisis for the Bitcoin Foundation, a nonprofit industry body created to fund development on the core Bitcoin protocol and give the currency institutional legitimacy with regulators and the press. The foundation held much of its reserve in Bitcoin and due to reckless spending, ran out of money during the 2014 crash. As the Bitcoin foundation wrestled with insolvency, Ito lured the Bitcoin protocol engineers to MIT, including Andreessen. In April 2015, Pearce was named chairman of of the foundation's board. Days later, three leading Bitcoin developers left the foundation and joined MIT's Media Lab new digital currency initiative. MIT is a better place to support the development. Pierce told the Los Angeles Business Journal, blessing the handoff. They have much deeper pockets than we do. That means Epstein has much deeper pockets. That's what that means. MIT Media Lab received 525,000 in gifts from Epstein, but between 2013 and 2017 to support Ito's work. Epstein's contributions helped Ito step into the vacuum and swiftly recruit the core Bitcoin team to the Media Lab. Ito reported to Epstein on April 25, sharing news of the successful coup. Used gift funds to underwrite this, which allowed us to move quickly and win this round. Thanks. Of course, it always comes down to money, and Epstein sure had a lot of that. Nobody's ever told us where he got it, but you know, he sure had a lot of it. A decade later, cryptocurrency industry regulatory issues have not been solved while its political role continues to expand in legal gray area. In early April 2026, Hamid Husseini, a spokesperson for Iran's Oil, Gas and Petrochemical Products exporter union, told journalists that Iran would be implementing a new gated control over the Strait of Hormuz. Once the email arrives and Iran completes its assessment, vessels are given a few seconds to pay in Bitcoin, ensuring they can't be traced or confiscated due to sanctions, Hosseini explained. Iranian authorities are reportedly using an office on Qesham island to convert payments to Rials or or route them to foreign accounts to protect funds from seizure. And everything's going as planned. That's exactly what this stuff is used for. And when it comes to situations like this, it's a whole new world, right? If Iran is not using the banking system and they're using workarounds, this is certainly a good way to do it. And having the currency in Bitcoin or crypto makes it a lot easier to do that. Meanwhile, the Treasury Department's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network and Office of Foreign Assets Control has reported that Iran is increasingly using stablecoins and other digital assets to buy and sell weapons, conduct international trade, and transfer funds to other countries and entities banned from the U. S Led economic order. The US Government has retaliated with seizures of of digital wallets, including an April 24 confiscation of an estimated 344 million in cryptocurrency the Treasury Department claimed was linked to Tehran. So where does that money go, by the way? I'm sure somebody's getting their fingers in it, right? Not me and you, but somebody. I'm sure it's not being used for the betterment of the people. How about we seize that 344 million and use it for, oh, I don't know, Infrastructure might be a good idea. Have you taken a look at the bridges lately? Epstein died In August of 2019, before stablecoin became an explicit plank of American monetary policy. And before Bitcoin developed into a tool in this geopolitical game of cat and mouse. But this strategy for regulatory capture has kept maturing since his death. Dollar peg tokens move crypto liquidity outside the banking system, while stablecoin issuers reserve pull the same activity back into dollars and the U.S. treasury bills. It all sounds like a big ass hustle to me. And frankly, anything Epstein was involved in, I want no part of. Meanwhile, as the Treasury Department continues to target Iran linked cryptocurrency, one close personal contact of Epstein has continued to shape cryptocurrency policy in the current White House. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, the longtime head of Canter Fitzgerald, was Epstein's occasional business partner and next door neighbor in New York. Lutnick's firm, a major Federal Reserve primary dealer in US Treasuries, has also become a major player in Tether agreeing to take custody of tethers U.S. u.S. Treasury reserves in 2021. So not only is Epstein involved, huh? We got old Howard Lutnick and Kanner. Boy, I'm gonna sleep great tonight. By the end of 2025, Tether said its treasury exposure exceeded 141 billion. And Tether's CTO has claimed 99% of its treasury bill portfolio was held with ganner. In a 2025 interview, Ludnick called Abstein the greatest blackmailer ever and told the New York Post that Epstein had extorted money from his rich associates by filming them getting massages at his residence. Lutnick claimed that he cut ties with Epstein after a 2005 visit to Epstein's mansion in Manhattan. Well, that was a lie, huh? And I know it's very shocking that Howard Lutnick would be telling us falsehoods, but here we are. But the good news is everybody left the island with him. His wife, his nannies, his kids. Documents published by the Justice Department contradict Lutnick's statements. Lutnick and Epstein maintained correspondence until at least 2018. Lutnick and his family even traveled to the US Virgin Islands for a 2012 lunch at Epstein's private island. Shortly after the visit, the two men signed a contract to invest and and Adfin, a payments processing platform. In January 2026, the Justice Department published, deleted, then restored an undated photograph of Epstein and Lutnick on Epstein's Island. In a closed door interview with members of the House Oversight Committee on Wednesday, Lutnick admitted visiting Epstein's island in 2012 and called his decision to do so Inexplicable. Oh, well, that covers it. You explained it away. It's inexplicable, folks, so let's just move on. Like what, you just forgot about that when you were lying to the American people? In July 2025, with guidance from Lutnick and the White House Digital Assets Working Group, Lutnick helped pass the Genius act, which exempted foreign treasury backed stablecoin issuers like Tether from audit requirements. In the 12 years since it was created, Tether has never undergone an independent audit to prove its stablecoins are fully backed by dollar reserves. Oh, this is a disaster waiting to happen. Bookmark this episode. Because this is a disaster that's waiting to happen, folks. And when it does, the whole ass economy is going to come tumbling down. And guess who's going to be left to pick up the pieces? Not Lutnick, not Trump. Not dealing with you, that's who. During his Commerce Secretary nomination hearing, Lutnick was asked about a Wall Street Journal report alleging that Tether owner Giancarlo Devasini promised associates Lutnick would use his political influence to kill legislation that could hurt the company. Well, I'm sure that never happened, right? Because Lutnick is just an up and up guy. Lutnick denied the claims, but his comments hinted at the critical role that Tether has come to play in in the global economy, telling lawmakers the US Congress should be careful not to undermine dollar hegemony on blockchain through legislation. In other words, leave us alone and let us steal. Basically what he's saying. And frankly, I don't know about you, but I don't think the dollar should be tied to this stablecoin nonsense or to Bitcoin or anything like it. How about tying it to tangible goods, tangible assets, you know, like gold. But that would be way too easy, right? And that would make it a lot harder for people like this to steal. That's what it all comes down to. Dirty ass, rotten son of a bitch money. And make no mistake, I'm talking about your money, not theirs. Because it's always us that ends up losing out, not them. And when it comes to bitcoin, you better believe that, that that's going to be the case. But as far as Epstein being involved with the creation of crypto, with the creation or formation of the rule system, that shouldn't shock anybody. And neither should the fact that all of it's built on a foundation of sand. Because when you're dealing with snake oil salesmen, you shouldn't be shocked when they sell you snake oil. All the information that goes with this episode can be found in the description box.