Epstein files revive claims over MIT funding, Bitcoin governance and alleged backdoors

On February 2 2026, newly released Department of Justice files on Jeffrey Epstein reignited online claims that he secretly steered Bitcoin's development and enabled code backdoors. Commentators focused on Epstein's indirect donations to MIT's Digital Currency Initiative, which briefly funded several Bitcoin Core developers, and tried to link this to the FBI's 2021 Colonial Pipeline ransom recovery. However, the reports emphasize that Bitcoin's open-source, decentralized governance and public code reviews undermine assertions of centralized control or hidden vulnerabilities attributed to Epstein.