‘Highly speculated on, but frustratingly vague’ is a sentence that can be used to describe Jeffrey Epstein’s links to almost anything in the world in the last two decades, and cryptocurrency is no different.
Indeed, despite him being a ‘level three’ sex offender – deemed likely to repeat the offence – digital assets media welcomed the billionaire financier as something of a counterweight to JPMorgan’s (NYSE: JPM) Jamie Dimon.
At the time, Dimon was already known as an exceptionally harsh cryptocurrency critic, making Epstein’s credibility as a businessman important for the industry’s legitimacy after he commented on Bitcoin’s (BTC) strong potential.
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Furthermore, the controversial billionaire is considered one of the first to position BTC as a ‘store of value’ when he explained the coin does not suffer from a potentially critical flaw in treating gold as a safe haven for wealth: it is entirely impossible to find a previously-unknown cache of Bitcoin that could crash its value overnight.
Epstein was also noted for believing BTC can’t be described as a currency, albeit with a caveat that he believed much of the vocabulary used for finance was outdated, even doubting the applicability of the word ‘currency.’
Did Epstein have direct links with cryptocurrency?
Still, despite the assumption that the financier and sex offender gave much thought to Bitcoin, his potential direct involvement with digital assets remains a mystery as there is no evidence of ownership or investments.
What is known – much as many other aspects of Epstein’s life – proved fertile ground for conspiracy. The financier has been a backer of MIT’s Digital Currency Initiative (DCI), a fact that allegedly led to the resignation of director Joichi Ito.
In turn, the DCI was a backer of several core Bitcoin developers starting 2015, leading to the theory – particularly driven by Epstein’s documented and suspicious links with many high-profile individuals – that the BTC fork that led to the split with Bitcoin Cash (BCH) was an elaborate coup against the world’s premier cryptocurrency.
Why Epstein conspiracy theories are on the rise
Given the continued chaos related to the release of the Epstein files, the alleged participation of numerous celebrities – potentially even President Donald Trump – in the financier’s underage prostitution ring, and the many allegations the FBI is processing the documentation for selective release, the theories are likely to become even more pronounced.
One recent example of the uncertainty and allegations related to Epstein – alleged to have committed suicide while in custody in 2019 – are the reports that he was not only a Mossad asset but also an FBI informant, per the X posts made by the prominent citizen journalist Mario Nawfal.
No matter Epstein’s crimes, the veracity of the many conspiracy theories, or his actual digital assets holdings, he appears to have been correct about Bitcoin’s potential – even after the latest bloody correction, BTC remains 1,292% above where it stood in 2017 at $80,393.
Featured image via Shutterstock
