Is Brock Pierce Behind Epstein’s $3M Early Coinbase Investment?
The release of the “Epstein Files” has dropped a strange new piece of lore into crypto history: newly released DOJ documents show Jeffrey Epstein alleged $3 million investment in Coinbase in 2014. This happened when the crypto exchange was still a small startup, and it’s worth noting that stake would be worth a fortune today.
Let’s set aside the more disturbing and chilling details from the files for now. It’s possible Pierce himself influenced Jeffrey Epstein early investment in Coinbase.
Interesting email from Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong to investors found in the Epstein files. It’s from February 2016, during Bitcoin’s block size debate.
Armstrong talks about how Coinbase is working in the background to ensure the network is not held back by “the early… pic.twitter.com/3MuxKyVhSz
— Kyle Torpey (@kyletorpey) February 1, 2026
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Epstein Investment in Coinbase: A Look at the $3 Million Early Stake
In December 2014, long before crypto became slightly mainstream, Epstein’s family office quietly deployed capital into Coinbase. According to the released emails, the investment didn’t go through a standard VC fund but was routed through his personal shell entity, IGO Company LLC.
The ledger shows a precise $3,001,000 buy-in. At the time, Coinbase was raising its Series C at a roughly $400 million valuation. For context, that’s a pre-IPO entry point that most VCs dream of: acquiring equity when Coinbase was just a wallet and broker, years before it became the publicly traded giant (COIN) we know today.
Today, Coinbase works directly with institutions and even served as a surveillance partner for BlackRock’s spot Bitcoin ETF filings.
Further information will be available as the files are analysed.
Jeffrey Epstein invested $3 million in Coinbase in 2014, it appears. BTW, Epstein doesn’t invest in his own name. He invested in Blockstream through Digital Garage and funded Bitcoin core devs through MIT.
I am now guessing that he might have invested through Brock Pierce’s… pic.twitter.com/3NYPsATsnr
— Aaron Day (@AaronRDay) February 3, 2026
The Connectors: Brock Pierce and the “Nice to Meet” Email
In crypto, everything is about the network. The alpha on this deal came via Brock Pierce, the Tether co-founder and Blockchain Capital boss, who facilitated the introduction.
In 2010, Epstein was already disgraced after his 2008 conviction and hired illusionist Al Seckel to clean up his online reputation. That effort expanded into the Mindshift Conference on Little St. James in early 2011, which Epstein later called his foundation’s “worst meeting.”
One speaker stood out, though: Brock Pierce. In an email under the pseudonym “Susan,” Epstein noted Pierce as interesting, marking a shift in his view of crypto, which he had previously dismissed as criminal. This led to an eight-year relationship, starting with Pierce seeking feedback on an online gaming fund in 2011. By 2012, their correspondence allegedly turned darker, involving discussions about women from Russia and Ukraine.
The paper trail shows that the Coinbase team was aware of who they were dealing with, at least on a surface level. Co-founder Fred Ehrsam is cc’d in the correspondence, with one email from Dec 3, 2014, discussing a potential meetup in New York. Ehrsam signaled he had time, noting it “would be nice” to connect if convenient.
Reports suggest Epstein paper-handed at least half the bag around 2018. He allegedly sold 50% of the stake back to the cap table for an estimated $11–15 million: a solid 4x return.
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Legacy Code: Blockstream, MIT, and the Wild West Era
This wasn’t Epstein’s only touchpoint with the OGs. He also had exposure to Blockstream’s 2014 seed round (roughly $500k) via a pooled vehicle managed by Joi Ito. While Blockstream CEO Adam Back has since clarified that the stake was sold off quickly due to compliance concerns, the money trail is undeniable.
Looks like Adam Back had some Caribbean fun with Jeffrey Epstein too, and Austin Hill (Blockstream’s moneybags guy with Reid Hoffman) wanted Jeffrey to own a bigger chunk of Blockstream equity.
Again, a decade ago, we were screaming that there was a major psyop to take over… pic.twitter.com/RBoDyGPCJz
— Kurt Wuckert Jr (@kurtwuckertjr) January 31, 2026
Furthermore, Epstein’s donations to the MIT Media Lab (approx. $525k) indirectly subsidized the Digital Currency Initiative (DCI), which paid the salaries of critical Bitcoin Core maintainers like Wladimir van der Laan and Gavin Andresen during the “crypto winter” of 2015.
In all of this, Bitcoin is holding around $78,000–$78,800 after rebounding from a weekend dump to ~$74,500. The $74K level held as support so far, but a retest remains possible if it fails to break above $79,600–$80,000 resistance soon.
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