TL;DR
- Back denied financial ties between Blockstream and Jeffrey Epstein or his estate after a Jan. 30 DOJ release recently resurfaced names.
- July 2014 emails cited Blockstream’s 10x oversubscribed $18M seed round, lifting an allocation from $50K to $500K, plus St. Thomas travel references.
- Back said Epstein was a limited partner in Joi Ito’s fund that later divested; files also show Epstein discussing Bitcoin with Peter Thiel and pitching currency ideas.
Blockstream CEO and co-founder Adam Back moved to address freshly unsealed Jeffrey Epstein records that surfaced his name and that of co-founder Austin Hill. Back said Blockstream has no direct nor indirect financial connection with Epstein, or his estate, positioning the issue as a governance clarification. The context is a Jan. 30 document release within a wider U.S. Department of Justice disclosure effort, where appearing in files does not by itself imply wrongdoing. Back said Epstein was a limited partner in a Joi Ito fund that once held a minority Blockstream stake, later divested.
In 2014, during Blockstream’s seed-round investor roadshow, the company was introduced to then MIT Media Lab director Joi Ito. Subsequently Blockstream met with Jeffrey Epstein, who was described at the time as a limited partner in Ito’s fund. That fund later invested a minority…
— Adam Back (@adam3us) February 1, 2026
Epstein files and fallout
The filings include July 2014 email correspondence about Blockstream’s seed round, with Hill telling Joi Ito and Epstein the raise was 10x oversubscribed on an $18M round and an allocation was increased from $50K to $500K. The documentation shows capital-raise logistics and relationship management that now carry reputational risk in hindsight. Back was included in the email loop. Separate unsealed materials referenced travel booking confirmations for Back and Hill to St. Thomas, near Epstein’s private island, and Hill wrote that they would arrange their own flights before continuing to SFO, under tougher disclosure optics.
In a Sunday post on X, Back said Blockstream met Ito during its 2014 investor roadshow and later met Epstein because he was presented as a limited partner in Ito’s fund. Back’s framing is that any financial linkage ended when the fund divested its Blockstream shares over conflict-of-interest concerns. He did not address the St. Thomas travel email, while Hill reposted Back’s statement. Even so, criticism spread across social media, with some arguing the response came only after the documents surfaced and others pressing for more detail about prior interactions, amid credibility repair efforts.
The unsealed batch also outlines Epstein’s broader crypto involvement and curiosity. Beyond Blockstream, the records depict Epstein engaging high-profile contacts on Bitcoin, rival projects, and even proposed currencies. Hill told Ito and Epstein that Stellar and Ripple were bad for Blockstream’s ecosystem and warned against backing two horses in one race. Another thread shows Epstein emailing Peter Thiel about what Bitcoin is. In 2016 he pitched “the Sharia” fiat and a Sharia-compliant digital currency, as the Epstein Files Transparency Act drove DOJ publication of over 6M records. Names included Kevin Warsh and Michael Saylor.
