Newly Unsealed: Epstein's $750K Bitcoin Funding Revealed

U.S. House Committee just dropped docs showing Jeffrey Epstein quietly bankrolled MIT's Digital Currency Initiative with at least $750,000 back in 2017. The money went straight into Bitcoin Core development—funding top devs like Wladimir van der Laan and Cory Fields.

Key details:
- MIT Media Lab director Joichi Ito thanked Epstein in emails for "gift funds" that let them "move quickly"
- Total Epstein donations to MIT hit $850K (though some claim it was actually $7.5M)
- Ito resigned in 2019 when the scandal broke
- Epstein also had early conversations with crypto figure Brock Pierce

The takeaway? Bitcoin's technical foundation wasn't compromised—the network's still maintained by a global, pseudonymous community. But this fuels the conspiracy theory crowd and raises real questions about funding sources in open-source projects. MIT since tightened its donation policies, warning that "everything becomes public eventually."

Note: Bitcoin Core remains solid, and this doesn't change how the network actually works. Just adds another wild chapter to early crypto history.