Old emails tied to the Jeffrey Epstein document release sparked a new round of social-media speculation this weekend after a screenshot of a 2014 email chain surfaced on X. The screenshot mentions Ripple and Stellar in the context of an investor dispute — and that was enough to ignite renewed debate about who was backing which crypto projects.
What appeared in the email
- The screenshot shows a message from Austin Hill (identified in the chain as a Blockstream co-founder) complaining to a group of high-profile recipients — reportedly including Joichi Ito, Reid Hoffman and Jeffrey Epstein — about investors spreading capital across competing projects. Hill reportedly described investors “backing two horses in the same race,” and framed support for Ripple or Stellar as hostile to the bitcoin-centric ecosystem he was trying to build.
Social-media reaction and pushback
- As the image circulated, some accounts implied that the mere mention of Ripple and Stellar in the chain was evidence of deeper links to Epstein. David Schwartz, former Ripple CTO, pushed back publicly, calling the leap from inclusion to implication “inflammatory.”
- Schwartz said he knows of no direct connections between Epstein and Ripple, XRP or Stellar, and that he’s unaware of any evidence anyone at Ripple or Stellar ever met Epstein or someone closely connected to him. He did acknowledge there are “some indirect ties between Epstein and people connected to Bitcoin in various ways,” but added that’s probably true of many very wealthy people.
Broader themes: tribal politics and project structure
- Schwartz used the episode to highlight a recurring problem in crypto: tribalism. In an initial post linking to the DOJ-hosted file, he warned the documents could be “the tip of a giant iceberg,” but later emphasized that treating competing projects’ backers as “enemies” is corrosive and “hurts everyone in the space.”
- The resurfaced email also reopened an old debate about how early projects structured themselves. In the thread, Schwartz said he’d opposed the idea of a nonprofit closely tied to private gains — calling such arrangements “dishonest and borderline illegal” and likening them to a retailer creating a non-profit to promote its own business.
Market note
- At press time, XRP was trading around $1.64.
Bottom line
- The new email screenshot revived past tensions between early crypto camps and prompted speculation about high-profile connections, but prominent figures like Schwartz cautioned against reading more into the inclusion of names than the document actually shows — instead urging the industry to move past an “us versus them” mindset.
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