Epstein Files Reveal Alleged Early Investment in Coinbase

TheNewsCrypto2026-02-03 tarihinde yayınlandı2026-02-03 tarihinde güncellendi

Özet

Epstein Files reveal that Jeffrey Epstein allegedly invested $3 million in Coinbase through Brock Pierce's Blockchain Capital in 2014. Documents suggest the deal may have secured him a meeting with co-founder Fred Ehrsam. A 2018 email indicates Epstein later sold half his stake back for around $11 million. Separately, Blockstream CEO Adam Back denied any financial ties to Epstein, though a document shows a co-founder discussed the firm's seed round with him.

The latest anticipation revolves around the Epstein Files, indicating a vast collection of documents associated with the case of American financier Jeffrey Epstein, which revealed that he made a $3 million investment in the crypto exchange Coinbase around 10 years ago.

According to the documents publicised by the U.S. Department of Justice, Epstein invested in Coinbase via Brock Pierce’s Blockchain Capital in 2014. A Bitcoin researcher, Kyle Torpey, mentioned that it is not clear if the deal really went through, but there are many discussions regarding investing in Coinbase in the files.

The buying supposedly arranged Epstein a face-to-face meeting with Coinbase co-founder Fred Ehrsam. The leaked email screenshot revealed mentioning Jeff and Ehrsam, signalling Ehrsam might be aware of his involvement in Coinbase.

The Revealed Screenshot

Ehrsam wrote that I have a gap between noon and 3pm today, but again, it’s not critical for me, but it would be nice to meet him if suitable. Is it important for him, as per the screenshot. After four years, in 2018, one more email surfaced that confirmed that Epstein got his Coinbase allocation. It seems that he then sold 50% of the stake back to Blockchain Capital for about $11 million.

At the same time, the chief executive officer of Blockstream, Adam Back, pushed back against allegations from the Epstein Files concerning his continued connection with the convict. Back posted on X, writing that Blockstream has no direct or indirect financial connection with Jeffrey Epstein.

A document publicised by the U.S. DOJ corresponding to July 2014 revealed that Blockstream co-founder Austin Hill talked about the seed round of the firm with Epstein and Joi Ito, then director of the MIT Media Lab.

Adam Back also mentioned in his post that Blockstream met with Jeffrey Epstein, who was referred to at the time as a restricted partner in Ito’s fund.

Highlighted Crypto News Today:

Trump Says He Was Not Involved in $500M Abu Dhabi WLFI Deal

İlgili Okumalar

Long-Divided Must Unite, Long-United Must Divide: When L1 Becomes Its Own Rollup, What Is Ethereum's Endgame?

"The Inevitable Cycle: When L1 Becomes Its Own Rollup – What is Ethereum's Endgame?" For years, the Ethereum community grappled with concerns that L2s were fragmenting the ecosystem and eroding L1's value. While L2s provided cheaper execution, they also splintered liquidity and the unified user experience of a single chain. This has prompted a fundamental reassessment of the relationship between L1 and L2. Ethereum's roadmap is evolving. The "Scale" initiative merges L1 and L2 expansion into a holistic framework. L1 itself is advancing with higher gas limits, statelessness, and zkEVM verification, no longer content to be just a low-throughput settlement layer. Consequently, the primary value proposition of L2s is shifting from merely providing cheap blockspace to offering L1 cannot easily provide: application-specific optimizations, privacy features, and flexible governance models. L2s are becoming a spectrum of execution environments with varying degrees of security inheritance from Ethereum. A critical challenge in this multi-chain future is interoperability. The vision is to make Ethereum "feel like one chain again." This relies on advancements in native account abstraction (like EIP-7702) and intent-based architectures (Open Intents Framework), where users declare desired outcomes, and solvers handle the complex cross-chain execution. Furthermore, shortening Ethereum's finality time from minutes to seconds is crucial, as it underpins trust between chains for bridges, stablecoins, and cross-chain applications. Perhaps the most provocative idea is that Ethereum L1 itself could become a form of "its own Rollup." As zkEVM and proof systems mature, high-performance nodes could execute transactions and generate validity proofs. Regular validators would then verify these proofs instead of re-executing all transactions. This blurs the traditional L1/L2 hierarchy, making "Rollup" more of a general execution-verification architecture. Native Rollup aims to integrate L2 validation more directly into the Ethereum protocol, allowing L2s to inherit L1's security more fully and move away from reliance on security councils. In the end, L2s are not destined to replace L1 or be made obsolete by it. The likely future is a unified system where diverse execution environments—each optimized for specific use cases like DeFi, gaming, or privacy—coexist. They will share a common foundation of security, liquidity, and verifiable state, seamlessly connected to restore a cohesive user experience. The next phase for Ethereum is not just about scaling through separation, but about intelligently reintegrating what was separated back into a coherent whole.

链捕手10 dk önce

Long-Divided Must Unite, Long-United Must Divide: When L1 Becomes Its Own Rollup, What Is Ethereum's Endgame?

链捕手10 dk önce

Agent Race Ends, Super Workbench Takes Over

The era of fragmented AI agents is ending. Over the past month, China's tech giants—Tencent, Alibaba, and ByteDance—have simultaneously shifted strategy: instead of launching new, standalone AI agents, they are consolidating their various agent projects into unified "super workbenches." Tencent integrated its QClaw teams into WorkBuddy, a strategic product hailed as a potential third flagship after QQ and WeChat. Alibaba is merging its QoderWork, Wukong, and MuleRun agents into a new "Qianwen Office" platform under DingTalk's leadership. ByteDance rebranded its TRAE SOLO coding agent to TRAE Work, signaling a broader focus on workflow collaboration. This convergence marks a pivotal industry consensus. The initial exploration phase, where companies rapidly built numerous overlapping agents for different scenarios, proved costly and inefficient. With open-source tools eroding technical barriers, competition has shifted from agent creation to resource consolidation and cost control. Historically, platform wars are won not by creating more products, but by simplifying them—as seen with browsers unifying web access and super-apps consolidating services. Now, the "super workbench" aims to become the unified AI entry point for work. This reflects a deeper market realization: the primary audience for AI is no longer just programmers (a market in the tens of millions) but all knowledge workers (a market of billions). The real opportunity lies in augmenting everyday tasks—managing emails, documents, data, and meetings—across the entire workday. The core battleground is becoming control over the primary AI entry point that employees use daily. Tencent's WorkBuddy leverages WeChat and Tencent Docs; Alibaba's Qianwen Office taps into DingTalk's organizational data; ByteDance's TRAE Work integrates with Feishu's workflows. Whoever owns this "super workbench" gains strategic control over orchestrating enterprise data and APIs. This shift is redefining enterprise software. Traditional SaaS applications, valued for their user interfaces, will recede into the background. Their core functionalities will be exposed as standardized "Skills" or APIs for the super workbench's agents to invoke. Software value will shift from selling user seats to charging based on API calls and outcomes delivered. The evolution of agents is moving through clear stages: first as novel standalone products, then as consolidated primary work entry points, and finally as pervasive, invisible capabilities embedded into the digital fabric. The recent moves by major tech firms signal the transition from the first stage into the second, accelerating toward the third. In the end, the most successful agent technology may become invisible—like electricity or the HTTP protocol—a fundamental, unnamed infrastructure powering work itself.

marsbit37 dk önce

Agent Race Ends, Super Workbench Takes Over

marsbit37 dk önce

Michael Saylor: 110 Reasons to Oppose BIP-110

Michael Saylor presents 110 arguments against Bitcoin Improvement Proposal (BIP) 110, a soft fork aimed at restricting certain non-monetary data storage uses (like inscriptions) on the Bitcoin blockchain. He acknowledges the proponents' valid concerns—such as node costs, fee pressure, and preserving Bitcoin's monetary focus—but fundamentally disagrees with the proposed solution. Saylor argues that BIP 110 represents a dangerous precedent of using consensus rules to enforce value judgments on transaction validity, moving away from Bitcoin's core principles of neutrality and permissionless innovation. His key objections are organized into eleven categories: 1) It violates neutrality and hard consensus by banning currently valid transactions. 2) It fails to meet the high burden of proof required for a consensus change, lacking concrete data on the alleged crisis. 3) Its seven bundled technical restrictions are overly broad, targeting generic script functionalities and blocking future upgrade paths. 4) It sacrifices compatibility and future optionality by closing off designed upgrade hooks. 5) Its temporary rules add significant complexity (grandfathering, expiry states) without sufficient justification. 6) The economic and security impacts, particularly on miner revenue and fee markets, are uncertain and unmodeled. 7) Superior, market-based tools (fee markets, relay/mining policies) already exist to manage blockchain load. 8) It stifles innovation by creating a chilling effect for developers. 9) Its modified activation mechanism (55% threshold, forced signaling) is aggressive and risks network splits. 10) The precedent it sets—using consensus to suppress disliked but legal uses—is more dangerous than the problem it aims to solve. 11) A better path exists: improving measurements, refining resource-based policies, and allowing market forces to work. Saylor concludes that Bitcoin's strength lies in its neutral rules, open markets, and hard consensus. Changing these foundational elements to target specific use cases is an unnecessary and risky "iatrogenic" intervention. He advocates for guarding Bitcoin's neutrality rather than acting as its redeemer.

marsbit52 dk önce

Michael Saylor: 110 Reasons to Oppose BIP-110

marsbit52 dk önce

United Stables Crosses $1B As Chainlink Data Feeds Secure U Token Collateral

United Stables' U token has surpassed $1 billion in market capitalization, with Chainlink Data Feeds providing the critical pricing and collateral data infrastructure across its deployment chains. This milestone highlights that robust oracle infrastructure is essential for stablecoin credibility, as DeFi protocols require reliable data for integration. Chainlink's role is foundational, enabling automated collateral auditing and pricing verification, which helps make the U token safer for the broader market to evaluate and use. While this strengthens Chainlink's position in the stablecoin infrastructure narrative, it does not directly guarantee increased fees or value for LINK token holders. The growth of U indicates both widening competition in the stablecoin sector and the increasing dependence of scalable stablecoins on dependable external data services.

bitcoinist2 saat önce

United Stables Crosses $1B As Chainlink Data Feeds Secure U Token Collateral

bitcoinist2 saat önce

BonkDAO Treasury Drain Shows Solana Governance Risk Is Real

The BonkDAO treasury suffered an approximately $20 million drain due to a malicious governance proposal passed through the Realms platform on Solana. This incident highlights governance as a critical attack surface for DAOs, distinct from smart contract exploits. The attack leveraged the DAO's own voting mechanics to move funds, demonstrating that flawed governance design—such as weak proposal rules or voter weight calculations—can be exploited even when the underlying blockchain functions correctly. The event serves as a warning for Solana DAOs to rigorously review and strengthen their governance safeguards, including quorum thresholds, timelocks, and execution permissions. While damaging to community trust, especially for the prominent BONK meme ecosystem, the issue is not a failure of the Solana base layer but a widespread application-level risk common across blockchain ecosystems.

bitcoinist2 saat önce

BonkDAO Treasury Drain Shows Solana Governance Risk Is Real

bitcoinist2 saat önce

İşlemler

Spot