Documents from the US Department of Justice reveal that Epstein invested $3 million in Coinbase in 2014, raising questions about the motives behind XRP Delisting after the SEC lawsuit.
Documents released last week by the U.S. Department of Justice revealed financial links between the notorious financier Jeffrey Epstein and Coinbase, reigniting the confrontation between Ripple and regulators. According to the report, Epstein invested $3 million in the U.S.-based cryptocurrency exchange in 2014 as part of a $75 million Capital round, along with other Silicon Valley firms such as DFJ and Andreessen Horowitz.
These revelations raise questions about Coinbase's Delisting of XRP in January 2021, just two weeks after the SEC filed a lawsuit against Ripple alleging the company conducted an unregistered securities offering worth $1.3 billion through the sale of XRP. According to discussions on Crypto Twitter, the opposition to XRP may have stemmed from an elite group influenced by this convicted sex trafficking criminal, although there is no direct evidence in the documents to suggest a link between Epstein and the Delisting decision.
However, emails in the newly released documents reveal that Epstein held an investment allocation in Blockstream in 2014. In an email dated July 31 of that year, CEO Austin Hill referred to reducing or eliminating Epstein's allocation, arguing that Ripple and Stellar were "harmful to the ecosystem" and that supporting these projects could undermine Blockstream's strategic direction.
Controversy over timing and motives.
Attorney Bill Morgan argued that the emails “implying Epstein’s desire to harm Ripple” appeared years before the SEC began investigating the issuer sometime between April and June 2018, just before or coinciding with Bill Hinman’s “Ethereum free pass” speech.
Morgan also cited emails between Epstein and former SEC Chairman Gary Gensler in May 2018, mentioning Gensler's connections to Elizabeth Warren and the anti-cryptocurrency faction within the Democratic party, but offered no link between Epstein and the Ripple investigation six years later.
Former Ripple CTO David Schwartz argues that the 2014 emails were just “the tip of a huge iceberg” in the wave of backlash the company faced. The emails show Austin Hill telling Epstein that supporting Ripple or Stellar would make one an opponent. Schwartz emphasizes that such attitudes harm all participants in the same ecosystem.
When Coinbase temporarily suspended XRP trading in January 2021, many other platforms like Crypto.com and OKCoin followed suit, causing a massive sell-off. One user on X stated that Coinbase removed XRP trading data from the South Korean market where prices were higher, making XRP appear to have plummeted and lost its position as the second-largest cryptocurrency to Ethereum. Coinbase claimed the reason for suspending XRP was due to legal concerns from the SEC.
According to the Washington Post, Epstein still held shares in Coinbase in 2017 and sold half of them in February 2018, earning $15 million – ten times the original amount.
