In Putin’s Orbit: The Crypto Politics of Jeffrey Epstein and Peter Thiel 

When Sputnik was launched by the USSR as the first satellite in space in 1957, the West was caught flat‑footed by a moment of technical and cultural revolution which had gone largely undetected over the preceding decade.

In a 2013 email, Jeffrey Epstein used the Sputnik analogy with a senior Russian official, saying that “the same can now happen with Russia taking the lead in finance,” arguing that instead of merely copying Silicon Valley and chasing Microsoft, Apple and Google, Russia could “leapfrog the global community by reinventing the financial system of the 21st century” through a new kind of money and securitisation.

The Russian official was Sergey Belyakov. After graduating from the FSB spy Academy, Belyakov had been a senior advisor to one of Vladimir Putin’s most stalwart oligarchs and international operators, Oleg Deripaska — himself a close associate of Epstein and Labour peer Peter Mandelson. By 2013, he was Russia’s Deputy Minister of Economic Development.

Epstein reminded Belyakov that he had helped craft the derivatives markets in the United States in the 1970s, and that this was a prelude to a “more advanced disruptive securitisation scheme that is now made possible by technology.” 

Russia, Epstein insisted, was “unique in its capability to execute on a grand vision” for “a new form of money, on a worldwide basis… much larger than any single project envisioned by any govt, and at its core not really that difficult to bring to fruition.”

He had reason to believe he would be listened to at the highest levels.

Writing on 22 May 2013, Epstein revealed: “Putin asked me to be in St Petersburg at the same time as his economic conference. I told him no. If he wants to meet, he will need to set aside real time and privacy.”

This wasn’t idle gossip. Epstein shared it with Ehud Barak, the former Israeli Prime Minister, who, weeks later, would meetPutin himself and could easily verify the claim through Kremlin channels.

In January 2014, Thorbjørn Jagland (then secretary general of the Council of Europe) wrote to Epstein that he was planning to meet the Russian President in Sochi. Epstein told Jagland to “explain to Putin that there should be a sophisticated Russian version of bitcoin,” calling it “the most advanced financial instrument available on a global basis”.

That is the lens for understanding the rest of the crypto network built around Epstein, Vladimir Putin, Peter Thiel and Steve Bannon. 

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Social Capital 

The key figure, along with Elon Musk, in the so-called PayPal Mafia and the founder of Palantir, Peter Thiel, was a keen admirer of cryptocurrency and its ability to provide an alternative to government-controlled fiat money, once declaring, “Bitcoin is what PayPal should have been”. 

He had long been in Epstein’s sights.

Back in 2012, Epstein received an email from fintech entrepreneur Ian Osborne, suggesting they “do Peter Thiel for drinks,” calling Thiel “best for currency” and tying him to Abu Dhabi’s sovereign wealth. 

In 2013, Epstein was urging former Israeli minister Ehud Barak, urging Barak to “spend real time with Peter Thiel”.

By July 2014, Thiel and Epstein were emailing each other about Bitcoin regulation at the New York Stock Exchange. In September that year, Epstein was hosting back-to-back meetings with Thiel and William Burns, then deputy Secretary of State in the Obama administration and now the director of the CIA. 

By 2015, Epstein floats Thiel as one of the people Belyakov should meet. Following Epstein’s suggestion, Belyakov was put in direct contact with Thiel, who asked his executive assistant to arrange an in-person meeting with him in July 2015.

Epstein had various interests here. The first is crypto. MIT emails show Joi Ito soliciting and accepting Epstein donations that helped keep Bitcoin Core developers on payroll after the Bitcoin Foundation collapsed. A separate thread shows that Epstein participated in the 2014 seed round for Bitcoin infrastructure development company Blockstream, raising his allocation from $50,000 to $500,000 after Ito asked for more room in an oversubscribed deal

But, just as Thiel was interested both in blockchain currencies and surveillance and data systems like Palantir, Epstein joined him with a $40 million investment in Thiel’s Valar Ventures, which, according to Ehud Barak, was ‘co-owned’ by Thiel and Epstein as they bought into the Israeli surveillance tech firm Carbyne. 

(A spokesman for Peter Thiel has subsequently denied this, and said Epstein was just a “limited partner”.)

As Epstein and Thiel’s finances aligned, so did their politics. Both men were unusually important early backers of Donald Trump’s first presidency.  A brief exchange from the emails captures the tone of the relationship. Epstein wrote to Peter Thiel, “I liked your Trump exaggerations, not lies,” before suggesting that Thiel “visit me [in the] Caribbean.”

Thiel broke with much of Silicon Valley to endorse Trump and pour millions into pro‑Trump PACs. Epstein’s correspondence shows close tracking of Trump–Clinton polling, campaign personnel, and appointments linked to Bitcoin and fintech.

At his Republican National Convention speech in 2016, Thiel used the platform at Trump’s coronation to attack “financial bubbles” and praise “new forms of money,” later telling audiences that Bitcoin could be a “Chinese financial weapon” or a hedge against the US dollar’s reserve status.