Jeffery Epstein Tried To Get In Touch With Gary Gensler

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What the 2018 Emails Actually Show

The key exchange occurred in early May 2018 between Epstein and former U.S. Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers.

In one email, Epstein wrote to Summers that “Gary Gensler [is] coming earlier… wants to talk digital currencies.” Another version of the message included a note marked “DO NOT SHARE OR QUOTE.” Summers replied that he knew Gensler from their time at the Treasury Department in the 1990s and described him as “pretty smart.”

Two days later, Epstein followed up with additional commentary about Gensler. He referenced Gensler’s prior Treasury role, his time at Goldman Sachs, and his tenure as CFTC chair. He also commented on Gensler’s political positioning during the Hillary Clinton campaign.

In a separate message, Epstein wrote that he “would be with Gary Gensler on crypto tomorrow.” However, the documents do not independently confirm whether that meeting actually took place.

At the time, Gensler had joined MIT Sloan School of Management and was teaching a course titled “Blockchain and Money.” The emails place him within academic and policy discussions around cryptocurrency, but they do not establish a formal relationship with Epstein.

Src: X (Aaron Day)

No Evidence of Direct Collaboration

Despite speculation online, the documents do not show:

• Direct email exchanges between Epstein and Gensler
• Financial investments between the two
• Policy coordination
• Influence over Gensler’s later SEC actions

Gensler later served as SEC Chair from 2021 to 2025 and led an aggressive regulatory crackdown on the crypto industry. However, the released files contain no evidence linking his regulatory decisions to Epstein.

Epstein’s Broader Crypto Involvement

While the Gensler emails are limited, the documents reinforce that Epstein had deep interest in cryptocurrency and digital asset policy well before his death in 2019.

Between 2002 and 2017, Epstein donated roughly $850,000 to MIT, including over $500,000 to the MIT Media Lab. Some of that funding supported the Digital Currency Initiative, which helped fund Bitcoin Core developers after the Bitcoin Foundation’s collapse.

Financial records also confirm that Epstein invested approximately $3 million in Coinbase in 2014 through an LLC structure. He also invested in Blockstream and communicated with early Bitcoin developers, venture capitalists, and crypto researchers.

In 2016, emails show Epstein proposing a Sharia-compliant digital currency modeled on Bitcoin. He also claimed to have spoken with “Bitcoin founders,” although those claims remain unverified.

Ripple and Bitcoin Ecosystem Speculation

Separate 2014 communications within Epstein-linked investment circles discussed Ripple and Stellar as competitive threats to Bitcoin-focused infrastructure. Some individuals in the XRP community have pointed to those older tensions, along with the 2018 Gensler references and Epstein’s MIT funding, to suggest bias in the SEC’s 2020 lawsuit against Ripple.

However, there is no documented evidence tying Epstein to the SEC’s enforcement strategy. Epstein died in 2019, before the Ripple lawsuit began. Additionally, under Gensler’s leadership, the SEC pursued enforcement actions across multiple crypto entities, not exclusively Ripple.

What the Documents Ultimately Show

The newly released files confirm that:

• Epstein discussed Gary Gensler in the context of digital currency conversations in 2018
• Epstein expressed interest in engaging with crypto academics and policymakers
• Epstein had significant investments and donations connected to early crypto infrastructure

However, the documents do not demonstrate any direct partnership, influence, or coordinated action between Epstein and Gensler.