Crypto Critics' Corner

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Episode 178 – The Twisted Relationship Between Jeffrey Epstein and Cryptocurrency Billionaire Brock Pierce

The Twisted Relationship between Jeffrey Epstein and Cryptocurrency Billionaire Brock Pierce – Crypto Critics' Corner

Cas Piancey and  @bennettftomlin discuss the relationship between Jeffrey Epstein and Brock Pierce.This episode was recorded on February 3rd, 2026.Additional resources:Protos article ⁨@coffeezillaextras⁩ video

Cas Piancey and Bennett Tomlin discuss the relationship between Jeffrey Epstein and Brock Pierce.

This podcast was recorded on February 3rd, 2026.

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English Transcript:

00:00:05:11 - 00:00:14:05
Cas Piancey
Welcome back everyone. I am Cas Piancey and I am joined, as usual by my partner in crime, Mr. Bennett Tomlin. How are you today?

00:00:14:07 - 00:00:19:00
Bennett Tomlin
Oh, I'm a little nervous. How are you, Cas?

00:00:19:02 - 00:00:35:01
Cas Piancey
I'm not nervous. I'm ready for this. We're we're going to be talking about, a person who we've both written about and discussed before. Maybe not on the podcast very much, but we've definitely written about them and had issues after writing about them.

00:00:35:01 - 00:00:40:09
Cas Piancey
So I understand why Bennett is a little nervous, but everything we're going to be discussing today is public record.

00:00:40:09 - 00:00:53:10
Cas Piancey
Like there's nothing. And we're also not going to make any scandalous claims. Everything that you that we're discussing right now, you can find for yourself, in the Epstein files. Unless the DOJ took these files down, which they may have.

00:00:53:10 - 00:00:57:01
Cas Piancey
We're talking about. Brock Pierce and his relationship to Jeffrey Epstein.

00:00:57:01 - 00:01:19:04
Cas Piancey
I want Bennett to describe Brock's early career. Let's start at childhood. Actor. But I also just want to lead with, If you want to follow along with us right now, you can go to protos.com, type in, type in Brock Pierce. It'll be the first article that comes up in your search. And go ahead and click that.

00:01:19:04 - 00:01:29:00
Cas Piancey
And you can kind of follow along with what we're going to be discussing today. But yeah, go ahead, Bennett and introduce folks to who Brock Pierce's, in case they're unfamiliar.

00:01:29:00 - 00:01:39:11
Bennett Tomlin
Brock Pierce is a former child actor who starred in, like, The Mighty Ducks and The Mighty Ducks sequel.

00:01:39:11 - 00:02:07:05
Bennett Tomlin
As a teenager, he retired from acting and immediately became part of this entity called Digital Entertainment Network, which he was doing in collaboration with Mark Collins, rector. We'll come up in a minute. Unfortunately, Dan was supposed to be providing videos over the internet, like short television style shows, but over the internet.

00:02:07:05 - 00:02:16:04
Bennett Tomlin
It kind of didn't work because it was too early. The infrastructure wasn't really there. There wasn't enough demand for video delivered over the internet.

00:02:16:06 - 00:02:40:10
Cas Piancey
And I want to add, there's clips of these shows available on the internet that they put out, and they're terrible. I mean, these are really bad. They're worse than generic sitcoms and stuff. And a lot of them revolve around, like, gay, gay and lesbian teenagers. But, you know, sorry, I just wanted to let people know if you want to find clips of these shows that then put out, you can find them.

00:02:40:10 - 00:03:09:03
Bennett Tomlin
Yes. And DEN was going to be a multimillion dollar IPO towards the end of the 1990s. But then that IPO ended up needing to get shit canned because Mark Collins-Rector, was accused of sexual assault and other forms of predation. Following this, Pierce, left den and decided to instead start internet gaming entertainment, which was gold mining, for WoW.

00:03:09:03 - 00:03:23:05
Bennett Tomlin
Basically, they hired a bunch of people in other countries and stuff to grind for gold in WoW. And then they tried to sell that gold to other people. I think there was also some stuff for a while where they were selling, like fully level characters and things like that.

00:03:23:06 - 00:03:44:00
Cas Piancey
Yes, yes. And in case anyone is unfamiliar, like I, some of our listeners I think are are older than me, which is, not exactly young. World of Warcraft, is what Bennett is talking about right now. He also did it for, ever EverQuest. So like a bunch of a bunch of different, they're called MMO RPGs.

00:03:44:02 - 00:03:52:18
Cas Piancey
a bunch of people get together and play, kind of fantastical game online where they try to complete missions. That is supposed to be the fun part,

00:03:52:18 - 00:03:57:10
Cas Piancey
but what Brock Pierce did was take that and be like, okay, well, we're going to loot Farm.

00:03:57:14 - 00:04:14:04
Cas Piancey
We're going to we're going to level up these characters, get expensive loot, good loot, and then we're going to sell that loot or those characters to other players. And it became a very profitable business, so profitable that, Goldman Sachs got involved. And you can you can take it away again.

00:04:14:08 - 00:04:44:00
Bennett Tomlin
Then it specifically Steve Bannon got involved. This is somewhat after he left Goldman Sachs. But he was able to bring in some, other Goldman Sachs guys for their money. And they come in, take over IGE for like $60 million or something like that. And so that's where Pierce and Bannon began working together publicly. And it was kind of like a big infusion of cash, which Pierce would end up committing to some of his later ventures.

00:04:44:02 - 00:05:15:04
Bennett Tomlin
Pierce does a couple of other things, kind of around the gaming space he ends up involved with, like a venture capital fund called Clearstone ventures, where, another tether co-founder, also, is a general partner. That's William Quigley. And after a couple of years bouncing around that space, he ends up getting involved with Bart and Bradford Stevens as they were initially setting up their cryptocurrency venture fund, which would eventually become Blockchain Capital.

00:05:15:06 - 00:05:32:13
Cas Piancey
Yeah, this was just a fund to be clear. Like this was part of the the the Stevens brothers, they had their own investment firm and they just started this separate little cryptocurrency fund that went on to become what we now call blockchain capital.

00:05:32:15 - 00:05:44:11
Bennett Tomlin
Yes. And so Pierce was majorly involved in the early years of blockchain capital, until he was forced out, when people again paid attention to Brock Pierce's history.

00:05:44:11 - 00:05:54:20
Bennett Tomlin
During his time at Blockchain Capital, he also got involved in a bunch of other cryptocurrency projects. He was part of Mastercoin, which became Omni, which is where tether originally launched.

00:05:54:22 - 00:05:58:19
Cas Piancey
He co-founded co-founded tether to be. This is a co-founder of tether.

00:05:58:22 - 00:06:28:22
Bennett Tomlin
He co-founded Real Coin, which became tether when it was bought out by the Bitfinex principals. He was part of Sunlot holdings and Goxrising two different initiatives that hope to either revive or purchase Mount Gox at different points. He got involved with, noble markets around this point, which was like trying to be this Nasdaq listed cryptocurrency exchange and ended up becoming a Puerto Rican international financial entity that marketed itself as a bank.

00:06:28:22 - 00:06:30:04
Bennett Tomlin
We'll probably get back to that.

00:06:30:05 - 00:06:54:01
Cas Piancey
Yeah, yeah, let's pause here. Actually, because I want I want everyone to. So you have kind of an a framing of who Brock Pierce is. He's been quite successful with a lot of these things. No one knows his exact net worth, as is usually the case with extremely wealthy, elite individuals, but he likely is a billionaire. I will say he at least has hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars.

00:06:54:05 - 00:06:54:16
Cas Piancey
He,

00:06:54:18 - 00:07:05:05
Bennett Tomlin
He claimed to be a billionaire back in like 2018. And when he was, like pressed on it, he said, oh, if I'm not a billionaire yet, I'll just make a token and then I'll be a billionaire or something to that general effect.

00:07:05:10 - 00:07:07:18
Cas Piancey
Yeah, yeah. I don't need money. I can make tokens.

00:07:07:18 - 00:07:13:04
Cas Piancey
that's kind of a basic understanding of who Brock Pierce's, but I want us to talk about.

00:07:13:06 - 00:07:24:22
Bennett Tomlin
Well, I sorry, I do, I glossed over I was talking about his professional career there during some of those things. There were some other personal struggles which were going on.

00:07:24:22 - 00:07:43:10
Bennett Tomlin
So Mark Collins-Rector, who we mentioned is part of den, who's a close friend or at least was at the time a close friend of Brock Pierce was eventually, indicted for some of his sexual crimes and fled the United States to go to Spain.

00:07:43:12 - 00:08:10:06
Bennett Tomlin
Brock Pierce went to Spain with him. Pierce has claimed he was unaware of the indictment and was unaware his good friend was a fugitive from the law when they did this. But nonetheless, Pierce was living with this fugitive from the United States justice system together in Spain. Eventually, Spanish authorities raided the house to arrest Mark Collins-Rector.

00:08:10:08 - 00:08:32:11
Bennett Tomlin
They found gigabytes and gigabytes of child pornography and a bunch of other stuff like that. This broke in some of like, I think The Hollywood Reporter broke it in the United States and tied Brock Pierce to it, causing him some problems in terms of his reputation and stuff that have continued to dodge him, with people claiming he's friendly with pedophiles.

00:08:32:11 - 00:08:47:12
Bennett Tomlin
We'll get to that. And so, yes, he has for years been plagued with various controversies surrounding how many of his close friends appear to be pedophiles or other forms of sexual criminals.

00:08:47:14 - 00:09:09:20
Cas Piancey
Yeah, and he's denied all of this and more or less his. I wouldn't say he's claimed to be a victim, but he's kind of pushed forward the idea that, like he was a young kid, when all of this stuff started, if anything, like you can't blame a 17, 18, 19 year old kid for making bad decisions. It's a fine line to walk.

00:09:09:20 - 00:09:17:17
Cas Piancey
I'm not going to really get into it right now. I think there's good reason to say that.

00:09:17:19 - 00:09:29:10
Cas Piancey
The behavior that was happening then has kind of continued throughout the rest of his career. A lot of people talk about the way that he behaves, behind closed doors

00:09:29:10 - 00:09:30:10
Cas Piancey
and stuff, and,

00:09:30:10 - 00:09:37:17
Cas Piancey
rumor the rumor mill is not necessarily good to him. And that is why, for instance, he had to leave Blockchain Capitol, like you mentioned.

00:09:37:19 - 00:10:11:06
Bennett Tomlin
Where he ended up having to leave like the Bitcoin Foundation. That's right. And some other things like that is because these controversies, which were known about which had been reported, were once again like brought to prominence, including when John Oliver at one point, like made a joke referencing a popular documentary called An Open Secret, which like referenced some of the earlier period of Brock Pierce's life when he, his friends were implicated in these sexual crimes.

00:10:11:08 - 00:10:34:14
Cas Piancey
Yeah. And, you know, there's issues with that. With that film, I won't say the the the film is, perfect, but it also raises some pretty disturbing questions. So, you know, buyer beware, when it comes to watching that and taking in what they say in it at 100% truth, but it is very interesting, I guess I'll say.

00:10:34:16 - 00:10:59:22
Bennett Tomlin
And also, yeah, I'll also add that, like the nature of the cycle of abuse is that victims often become perpetrators or people who perpetuate the thing. And so there is a decent chance that many of the people, including many of the people around Epstein, who may have been perpetuating or perpetrating sexual crimes, were at some point perhaps themselves a victim of some of that behavior.

00:11:00:01 - 00:11:37:07
Cas Piancey
I spoke to a victim yesterday, not of Epstein, but a victim of abuse. And I said to them, one of the things I said to them was, it's very fascinating to me how so many of the victims were tasked with finding more victims and that they would go on to do it. And we both came to this conclusion that I, you know, I'm no psychologist, and I'm not trying to say I am or make any kind of claim that I am, but you have, you know, all the control wrested, wrested from you, and you lose all control.

00:11:37:12 - 00:12:00:07
Cas Piancey
It feels like when something like that takes place and it feels like a a way to get that power and that control back is to be like, okay, fine, I'm going to I'm going to go get more people. Now I'm the one who has the power. So it's not to say it's forgivable or, acceptable behavior, but at least there's a way to understand it, you know?

00:12:00:09 - 00:12:04:12
Bennett Tomlin
Yes. And so that we've talked now about some of the broader context around this tether

00:12:04:12 - 00:12:16:10
Bennett Tomlin
co-founder cash, could you start with Brock Pierce and Jeffrey Epstein becoming people who communicate in a semi-regular basis? How did that happen? What did it look like?

00:12:16:10 - 00:12:43:08
Cas Piancey
Yeah. So in 2010, this is two years after Jeffrey Epstein had already been, arrested for and then eventually accepted a guilty plea for procuring minors for prostitution. That happened in 2008. And by 2010, he's still struggling with the ramifications of that. He's still getting civil lawsuits. He's still facing a lot of media attention about what he what he's accused of.

00:12:43:11 - 00:13:09:00
Cas Piancey
There's new victims coming forward, new new lawsuits, new problems. So he desperately wants to try to fix this, and he doesn't know how. So he reaches out to someone named Al Seckel Alfred Seckel. Most people probably are not super familiar with this guy. He is. He was well known in, I guess, like in the Epstein circles.

00:13:09:01 - 00:13:41:00
Cas Piancey
He dated for many years. He dated Ghislaine Maxwell's sister. Ghislaine Maxwell, if you're unfamiliar, is basically known as the madam for Jeffrey Epstein. So Al Seckel was dating, Ghislaine Maxwell's sister, Isabel, and he was in regular contact with Jeffrey Epstein. And Epstein reached out to him and said, hey, I need you to scrub the internet of my sexual assault issues and my legal issues.

00:13:41:00 - 00:13:59:13
Cas Piancey
I need you to get rid of this stuff. And he also says he'll do it for $25,000. So Jeffrey Epstein pays him $25,000. Then I'll ask for 10,000 more dollars, because it turns out he didn't give the money to who he was supposed to. Then he asked for 10,000 more than he says he wants to put on a conference.

00:13:59:13 - 00:14:21:21
Cas Piancey
And the conference is going to cost somewhere like $100,000, possibly, maybe more. It's going to be a very expensive conference. It's going to be hosted on Jeffrey Epstein's private island. And Al Seckel says, this is great for you. Like, we're going to wipe everything clean and we're going to make you out to be a philanthropist, a science philanthropist, somebody who who cares about giving.

00:14:22:00 - 00:14:50:11
Cas Piancey
And this is this conference is going to be the start of a new beginning for your reputation. So despite having problems now and concerns about the honesty of Al Seckel and the ability for him to follow through with his, promises, Epstein goes ahead with this conference. And the conference is called the Mind Shift Conference. One of the invitees is Brock Pierce.

00:14:50:13 - 00:15:26:04
Cas Piancey
Originally, Brock had been planned to because he has a winery. I guess, Brock Pierce had been planned to do a wine tasting, but Epstein said, no, I don't want a wine tasting. Forget it. So instead of doing a wine tasting, Brock Pierce does a presentation on cryptocurrencies and despite the fact it turns out Epstein hates this conference, he sends in an email pretending to be someone else, pretending to be this random woman named Susan, and he tells Al Seckel it's the mind shit conference.

00:15:26:06 - 00:15:49:10
Cas Piancey
He says it's it was the worst thing that the Epstein Foundation has ever funded. And he's complaining as this fictitious woman, even though it the email has all the spelling errors that Epstein includes. It has all the grammatical errors that Epstein. It's obviously Jeffrey Epstein al Seckel actually responds and says, I'm not an idiot. I know that this is you, Jeff.

00:15:49:10 - 00:16:03:05
Cas Piancey
To which to which Jeffrey Epstein does not respond. But one of the important little tidbits in this angry, rambling email that he sends to Al Seckel is.

00:16:03:05 - 00:16:30:00
Cas Piancey
Reichert was interesting, as was Brock. So he mentions two names as people he enjoyed and thought they had a interesting presentation during this conference that he hated. And very quickly after that, which takes place in January of 2011, Brock Pierce and Jeffrey Epstein start to become pretty close.

00:16:30:00 - 00:16:48:22
Bennett Tomlin
And so this conference is like the main connection we knew of between Jeffrey Epstein and Brock Pierce. Before this recent release of the files, that was the thing people would always point to, to be like, no, Brock Pierce didn't just have these problems when he was younger. He's still actively choosing to associate with pedophiles.

00:16:48:22 - 00:16:59:04
Bennett Tomlin
And so from that email, like you said, they became good friends and they start to financially collaborate, it seems like.

00:16:59:06 - 00:17:07:15
Bennett Tomlin
So Pierce asks Epstein for his advice and a bunch of the legal and financial situations he repeatedly finds himself in.

00:17:07:17 - 00:17:27:15
Cas Piancey
Yeah, they're not necessarily doing business together yet, but Brock Pierce is asking for advice. It seems like Jeffrey Epstein's also occasionally reaching out to ask questions about cryptocurrencies and bitcoin and and stuff like that. So so a relationship begins where they're at least asking each other questions about finance and cryptocurrencies.

00:17:27:15 - 00:17:33:03
Cas Piancey
And that's when things begin to get really weird and gross.

00:17:33:03 - 00:17:50:01
Cas Piancey
I want to say none of what we're suggesting here is proof of any crime. And I suspect, though Brock Pierce has not responded, at least as of recording, Brock Pierce has not responded to Protos. He has not put out any messages. There's no PR about this.

00:17:50:01 - 00:18:17:02
Cas Piancey
He's just stayed silent. So no one has heard anything from him. It's worth saying none of what we're sharing here is necessarily criminal. It just looks weird and gross and disgusting. Okay, so that that's the preface. Sorry. Bennett. What what do they start talking about after they've done a little bit of discussion of business finance and cryptocurrency?

00:18:17:02 - 00:18:32:00
Bennett Tomlin
as we said, Brock reaches out to see what Jeffrey Epstein thinks about a fund the Clearstone Group is putting together. That's the, gaming venture capital fund that we mentioned that Brock was involved with.

00:18:32:00 - 00:18:55:07
Bennett Tomlin
then they will eventually engage in some business transactions together. But before those business transactions, there's a series of strange and uncomfortable emails where they seem to be discussing women in some unusual and uncomfortable manners.

00:18:55:07 - 00:19:12:03
Bennett Tomlin
Like, there is one email where Jeffrey Epstein, is talking about these people who were in LA and encouraging, Brock to go meet up with these people. He tells Brock, don't bring your girlfriend to this.

00:19:12:05 - 00:19:18:08
Cas Piancey
And Brock responds, we'll do. Broke up with my girlfriend last night, so that won't be a problem.

00:19:18:08 - 00:19:36:18
Cas Piancey
And then later after this meeting, Brock says, I had a great time with the girls. Hope they had fun too. Thanks. Best regards. Now, like, a little weird, considering who's involved. Yeah. Criminal? No. Definitely not. Right. Like it's innocuous enough.

00:19:36:18 - 00:19:55:03
Cas Piancey
There's just some back and forths about some women. Every. Every man is talked about women interim if like every I guess I'll say every straight man has at least had a conversation with their friend about like, hey, I think this girl would be great for you or something. And it's like, okay, yeah, I'll meet up with her. This could literally be something like that, right?

00:19:55:03 - 00:20:05:08
Cas Piancey
Except there's two girls named. The whole thing is weird. I'm going to be honest, it's very strange, actually. Most people don't do this. Well.

00:20:05:09 - 00:20:26:19
Bennett Tomlin
So she most people don't do this, like, once they're adults. Like, when you're a seventh grader and you're insecure, you'll be talking to your buddies and be like, oh, what do you think about so-and-so or whatever? But like the older you get, the more you like, understand that these people are humans and you should engage with them, like as a human being and not as like, object for your play.

00:20:26:19 - 00:20:46:15
Bennett Tomlin
So, yeah, there's those emails you talked about, there's another email where Jeffrey Epstein talks about his new Russian in LA that he once brought to meet up with. And man, that's a sentence that has a lot of possible implications, very few of which we can definitively say, yeah.

00:20:46:19 - 00:20:54:10
Cas Piancey
It's very strange. My new Russian is in LA. I okay, I don't know what that means.

00:20:54:10 - 00:21:10:13
Bennett Tomlin
How many Russians do you have? Epstein? Anyways, you know, this one? At least one. Yeah. There's another one after that where, Brock Pierce is telling Epstein that he knows a girl in New York.

00:21:10:18 - 00:21:25:02
Cas Piancey
So this is. And I just want to clarify, because this is Epstein says, hey, I have a Russian in LA. Can you meet up with her? And Brock says, oh, yeah, I think so. And then he doesn't he isn't able to meet up with this. This Russian girl. And he's and he says like, oh, sorry, I couldn't meet up with this Russian girl.

00:21:25:04 - 00:21:28:03
Cas Piancey
But also, I have a girl for you in New York.

00:21:28:03 - 00:21:47:16
Bennett Tomlin
Brock gives Jeffrey Epstein the name of this woman and encourages Jeffrey Epstein to check her Facebook, to which Jeffrey Epstein responds, cute. Which is uncomfortable and unpleasant. In light of the broad context, we all know about these individuals.

00:21:47:20 - 00:21:52:06
Cas Piancey
And again, nothing criminal here, just very strange stuff.

00:21:52:08 - 00:21:54:02
Bennett Tomlin
Not necessarily criminal.

00:21:54:05 - 00:22:03:12
Cas Piancey
Yeah, that's right. At least now. But now is when it starts to get really, really weird in my opinion. And this is when I start to wonder.

00:22:03:12 - 00:22:32:17
Cas Piancey
I think at worst, what we've seen so far is. Who who knows what the worst possible. Who knows what the worst possible thing is that we've seen so far. But I will say that the emails don't present anything that you could be like, that you could definitively be like, oh, I know what's going on there. The next ones I would say are a little bit more telling.

00:22:32:18 - 00:22:37:20
Bennett Tomlin
Becomes harder to come up with innocuous explanations that for some of these emails.

00:22:37:22 - 00:23:06:23
Cas Piancey
That's correct. In August of 2012, Brock Pierce says, currently in Moscow, next stop, Kiev and then Odessa, to which Epstein responds, take photos and find me a present. Brock Pierce replies to that with will do smiley face. That's gross. But more gross and more telling.

00:23:06:23 - 00:23:31:15
Cas Piancey
Is that three days after that, Brock Pierce sends Jeffrey Epstein 30 plus images of a girl named Anastasia. And he says at the bottom of this email, the Ukraine is now my favorite country smiley face. I also want to make sure everyone understands it's not the Ukraine, it's Ukraine. That is a Russian way of discussing Ukraine is to call it the Ukraine.

00:23:31:17 - 00:23:48:18
Cas Piancey
So he talks like a Russian. He behaves like a weird creep, and he's taking pictures of women and sending them along to Jeffrey Epstein for reasons undefined, I guess.

00:23:48:20 - 00:24:16:08
Bennett Tomlin
Yes. And again, just to preempt any of the lawyers who might be watching this, there are some plausibly not illegal reasons that I guess Brock Pierce would be sharing these pictures, even if those reasons might be immoral. Perhaps they're not illegal. But so, yeah, we see this part of their relationship where they, discuss women and things like that.

00:24:16:08 - 00:24:34:12
Cas Piancey
Well, I want to add one last thing to this part that wasn't actually included in our article. This is something. And we'll hopefully we'll in our show notes, you can we'll link to the coffee zilla or voidZilla I guess is the channel voidZilla video, where he discusses, some of the stuff he's found,

00:24:34:12 - 00:24:44:01
Cas Piancey
something that Epstein seems to do regularly is have people go around globetrotting for him, taking pictures and finding women.

00:24:44:07 - 00:24:48:03
Cas Piancey
And then he,

00:24:48:05 - 00:24:50:04
Cas Piancey
Gets visas issued for them.

00:24:50:04 - 00:25:10:13
Cas Piancey
Brock Pierce and Jeffrey Epstein specifically talk about. And, an e5 b visa or an EB sorry, Eb5 visa. And that is for someone. They spend $1 million starting a business. They're allowed to get, temporary residence here in America.

00:25:10:13 - 00:25:38:08
Cas Piancey
So why are Brock Pierce and Epstein getting visas for people again? Unclear. Undefined. We don't know. I don't know who knows? We just, you know, it seems very strange. It it's it's not elite. Nothing. Nothing illegal. You know, as you said, don't want lawyers breathing down our neck. But I just wanted to add that little tidbit to this set of affairs that transpired.

00:25:38:08 - 00:25:55:10
Bennett Tomlin
we'll come back to some of their financial dealings, but I actually want to jump ahead a little bit to, Susie or little Sue. Cas, can you just talk briefly about the relationship between Pierce, Epstein, and Sue?

00:25:55:10 - 00:26:27:17
Cas Piancey
it's a very, very strange set of circumstances. So that first, the first time due to terrible redaction by the Department of Justice, which they've gone ahead and already taken back thousands of files. We know that so far, they're probably going to have to take back way more. They did a really terrible job of redacting. And so we know the names of some of the people mentioned in, like the previous emails, that we discussed the for the first time that women were sent to see Brock Pierce.

00:26:27:19 - 00:27:11:05
Cas Piancey
One of them was this woman named Sue. Sue comes up a lot in Epstein's emails. I don't know if she's an assistant. I don't know if she's an assistant slash something else. It sure feels that way. But. Brock Pierce continues to see Susie often, regularly. The relationship continues for years and years, and years. And as that relationship continues, Epstein starts to get pretty involved in the in their relationship, which is, again, very odd to me that, Epstein cares like he he asks, are you being faithful to Susie?

00:27:11:05 - 00:27:12:15
Cas Piancey
Are you being faithful to Sue?

00:27:12:15 - 00:27:18:22
Cas Piancey
he tells Joi Ito, for instance. Oh, Brock Pierce is Little Sue's boyfriend,

00:27:18:22 - 00:27:28:02
Cas Piancey
he'll email Brock and say like, hey, it's Sue's birthday? And he's like, oh my God, thank you for telling me. I got a I got a message or no, no, no, don't you know, you figured it out on your own.

00:27:28:06 - 00:27:46:06
Cas Piancey
Very, very, very weird stuff. But as this relationship continues by 2018. So now Brock Pierce has known, Epstein for seven years. By 2018, Brock Pierce is married to a woman named Crystal Rose.

00:27:46:06 - 00:28:02:07
Cas Piancey
And yet he sends Jeffrey Epstein an email in January of 2018 saying, I'm ready to marry Sue, though I'll have two wives going to attempt to thread that needle over the next few days with Crystal.

00:28:02:08 - 00:28:24:10
Cas Piancey
I don't know if he tried to attempt that to he attempted to thread that needle actually with Crystal Rose, or this was something he was just saying to Epstein because he wanted Epstein to think, yeah, I'm still interested in Sue or Susie. I have no idea what happened with this, but that's polygamy and polygamy is illegal in America.

00:28:24:10 - 00:28:43:16
Cas Piancey
Maybe he meant it in some spiritual way. I don't know, and I don't know how Sue felt about it. And I don't know how Crystal Rose felt about it, but I know that he's laying it out in plain English that his plan is to marry for the second time. This woman, who was introduced to him by Jeffrey Epstein.

00:28:44:17 - 00:28:46:17
Speaker 1
I don't think anyone knows what happened with that.

00:28:46:17 - 00:28:57:00
Bennett Tomlin
I'm actually not even 100% positive that Brock is, like, married to Crystal in a way that the legal system recognizes.

00:28:57:02 - 00:29:03:06
Cas Piancey
I know it's a smart contract marriage or something. I don't. Yeah, I don't know what that means.

00:29:03:08 - 00:29:25:02
Bennett Tomlin
That's not really the point. I think this more just points to the degree of intimacy between Brock Pierce and Jeffrey Epstein, where they are, like, discussing these intimate personal relationships. Brock seems to have some amount of romantic connection to this person who's clearly in Jeffrey Epstein's orbit. And like

00:29:25:02 - 00:29:39:11
Bennett Tomlin
it is weird to see them so casually discuss so much of this kind of thing when we all know and Brock should have known, that one of the people involved in this conversation is a pedophile.

00:29:39:13 - 00:29:40:14
Bennett Tomlin
That's right.

00:29:40:16 - 00:29:45:20
Cas Piancey
That's right. And I want to add, you and I are both married, and,

00:29:45:20 - 00:29:52:18
Cas Piancey
It seems so cavalier to discuss somebody who you've.

00:29:52:20 - 00:29:57:10
Cas Piancey
Promised you're going to be with for the rest of your lives.

00:29:57:10 - 00:30:16:04
Cas Piancey
As though it's like a game or something. Like. It's like, clearly the idea of marriage doesn't actually matter to Brock Pierce. There's just some weird reason that he feels like he's ready to marry Sue. Like, why do you need to have two wives? Why can't you just be happy dating?

00:30:16:04 - 00:30:40:06
Cas Piancey
Like, if you want to be polyamorous, fine, I like, that's fine, I don't care. But, like, the way that he's so cavalier, the condescending attitude, the way that he's treating women and talking about women, it's disturbing. It's disgusting. And it's bizarre. Like, I can't imagine even if I got into a massive fight with my wife, I would not talk about her this way.

00:30:40:06 - 00:30:43:05
Cas Piancey
It's really, really strange.

00:30:43:05 - 00:30:52:18
Bennett Tomlin
it suggested a very basic level. Epstein and his friends may not have been upstanding men.

00:30:52:20 - 00:30:54:14
Cas Piancey
Yeah. So, surprise, surprise.

00:30:54:16 - 00:30:58:12
Bennett Tomlin
Returning to the business relationship between these two,

00:30:58:12 - 00:31:20:23
Bennett Tomlin
we talked briefly about how, Pierce asked for Jeffrey Epstein's advice on this Clearstone gaming fund. There was also, Brock Pierce before its collapse. Brock Pierce let Jeffrey Epstein know he was thinking about purchasing Mount Gox, then the largest Bitcoin exchange. And this is a thing that, Pierce would keep trying to do.

00:31:21:04 - 00:31:27:23
Bennett Tomlin
He did it with Sunlot holdings, which he did in collaboration with John Betts. He did it with Goxrising,

00:31:27:23 - 00:31:37:07
Bennett Tomlin
which it was never clear where the money for Goxrising was coming from. But that was another attempt of Brock Pierce to revive Mount Gox.

00:31:37:10 - 00:32:04:14
Bennett Tomlin
There's other weird conversations, like Epstein speaking to Bill Gross of Idea Lab, where he talked about a cryptocurrency that Brock Pierce had pitched him, it's a little bit hard to tell from the description, but it might be an early version of tether. It seems to more be like an algorithmic stablecoin, but there's perhaps that was the germination of tether.

00:32:04:16 - 00:32:23:13
Bennett Tomlin
The story of tether is kind of weird when you go back to like the pre Realcoin days, and a lot of the mastercoin people who were involved in it said that like it was over a year from like its initial conception, which would put it around the time this email was sent to the time they were actually ready to launch.

00:32:23:13 - 00:32:34:09
Bennett Tomlin
It as Realcoin in the summer of 2014, so that email was sent in May of 2013 around when the realcoin tether founders said they started thinking about this project.

00:32:34:11 - 00:33:03:17
Bennett Tomlin
There's also, Brock Pierce asked Jeffrey Epstein to look over a Nasdaq agreement related to what was then Noble Markets, which was then a cryptocurrency exchange. It became, like we mentioned at the beginning of this episode, an international financial entity called noble Bank, which for a brief period was Tether's primary tether to the banking system. Yeah.

00:33:03:17 - 00:33:16:02
Cas Piancey
As a clear noble bank was not a bank, even though it called itself bank, which I think in the States is illegal. You can't do that. But maybe they have different rules and regulations about if he's in Puerto Rico.

00:33:16:07 - 00:33:37:21
Bennett Tomlin
It's also been softened up a bit in the States. That's why, you see, like, like things like chime, like Walmart's, banking thing. Chime advertises itself as like banking done different even though it's a fintech and it's not a bank like there have been some changes in the advertising rules letting fintechs advertise their services as banking, even though they're not banks.

00:33:37:23 - 00:33:42:00
Bennett Tomlin
I think that's a bad choice, but they don't let me make regulations.

00:33:42:00 - 00:33:45:10
Cas Piancey
a lot of cleaners are quite happy about that.

00:33:45:12 - 00:33:56:09
Bennett Tomlin
Anyways, I think one of the most fascinating business transactions between these two is the Coinbase investment. Could you talk to us a little bit about the Coinbase investment Cas?

00:33:56:11 - 00:34:00:12
Cas Piancey
Oh man. The Coinbase investment is so fascinating and gross to me.

00:34:00:12 - 00:34:22:19
Cas Piancey
basically we talked about this Bennett mentioned this at the at the top. But basically these two brothers, Bradford and Bart Stevens, have a cryptocurrency partners two LP, that they begin in collaboration with Brock Pierce and Brock Pierce decides to bring Jeffrey Epstein into this fund.

00:34:22:19 - 00:34:45:01
Cas Piancey
It's unclear every investment made in this fund. I'm unsure and unclear if Epstein put other capital into this fund, or if there were other investments made, but the one investment we know for sure that Epstein contributed to was that he dumped $3 million into this fund so that they could make a Coinbase investment.

00:34:45:01 - 00:34:50:22
Cas Piancey
I think a lot of people, myself included, until relatively recently, figured that.

00:34:50:22 - 00:35:18:09
Cas Piancey
if there's going to be a Bermuda based like corporation or, you know, that there's ways to hide identity so that not every business necessarily knows who's investing money into their business. But it turns out that's not necessarily true, because as Coinbase is closing this round, it suddenly Brock Pierce is like, hey, if we want to do this, we got to do it right now.

00:35:18:11 - 00:35:26:07
Cas Piancey
Jeffrey, do you want to do this? And he's Jeffrey says, yes, of course. Yeah, I want to put $3 million into Coinbase

00:35:26:07 - 00:35:37:02
Cas Piancey
And Pierce then states, okay, well, the only issue is, if you really want to do this, I have to tell the founders who you are.

00:35:37:04 - 00:36:00:03
Cas Piancey
He invested, he got he made the investment. We know there's proof that he got a cash out from this. Which we can get into, I don't know, later if we want to, or now. But he absolutely made this investment, which suggests. No, no proves for a fact that Fred or I don't know how to say his last name or some Fred Ehrsam.

00:36:00:03 - 00:36:32:09
Cas Piancey
And Brian Armstrong knew that Jeffrey Epstein was dumping $3 million into Coinbase. Let's be real, Coinbase was not hard up at this point. They didn't they they didn't need the $3 million from Jeffrey Epstein. They took it. And the reason they took it is because they thought that no one would know that Jeffrey Epstein invested in Coinbase. Thankfully, we have certifiable proof that not only did Jeffrey Epstein invest in Coinbase, they knew that he invested.

00:36:32:11 - 00:36:54:00
Cas Piancey
They knew that a pedophile who had been arrested in 2008 for procuring a minor for prostitution was going to invest in their company, and they were okay with that. Yeah. That is that's that it's not just bad as in you. I don't like that. It's bad risk management. Seriously.

00:36:54:02 - 00:37:10:20
Bennett Tomlin
This was one of the most surprising things that you came across when you were making this article because I, like you, always assumed that most of the people who were receiving Jeffrey Epstein investments had some pastiche of plausible deniability.

00:37:10:20 - 00:37:29:12
Bennett Tomlin
But here we have Coinbase, one surprisingly doing due diligence and two, doing the due diligence. And then being like Jeffrey Epstein. Yes, he passes our due diligence bar like the truly stunning thing about it for me was that what name would they have rejected?

00:37:29:14 - 00:37:41:13
Bennett Tomlin
Who could Brock Pierce have gone back to? Those founders with said the name and they would have been like, oh no, we can't take that money, because Jeffrey Epstein apparently doesn't reach that standard.

00:37:41:15 - 00:37:43:04
Cas Piancey
And like, disturbing.

00:37:43:06 - 00:38:20:10
Bennett Tomlin
I think that kind of points to how willing so many of these people, so many of these entities were to ignore such atrocities as long as they remained, like, connected to these centers of power and influence. And that for so many of these men, it's a lot of men in here. It's like they'll overlook anything if it means they have just this much more marginal access to, like, power or influence.

00:38:20:16 - 00:38:44:04
Bennett Tomlin
And that seems to have been like a huge portion of Jeffrey Epstein's like, game he was playing. Here is he did his very best to cultivate as many of those relationships as possible. And then dangled these relationships kind of like in front of these other people for access, like one of the other emails you found was one where,

00:38:44:04 - 00:39:06:14
Bennett Tomlin
Brock Pierce was asking Jeffrey Epstein for an introduction to Larry Summers, another well known Epstein associate who all over these files is like asking Jeffrey Epstein for romantic advice as he debates whether or not he has, like a 70 year old man or whatever, should pursue one of his grad students who's in his seminar.

00:39:06:16 - 00:39:26:21
Bennett Tomlin
God, I hate Larry Summers. That's not the point of this episode. But like so much of Epstein's role was in acting as like this way to facilitate those kind of high power, high influence, high status relationships between these people and that because these people so desperately wanted to maintain that access, they could overlook any amount of child rape.

00:39:26:21 - 00:39:29:15
Cas Piancey
It couldn't possibly put it better. And I think that is,

00:39:29:15 - 00:39:46:17
Cas Piancey
that is a perfect segue, actually, into exactly the next topic, which is that it turns out Brock Pierce introduced and this is going to have ramifications for the rest of the world and everyone who lives in it. Brock Pierce introduces,

00:39:46:17 - 00:39:49:13
Cas Piancey
Jeffrey Epstein to Steve Bannon.

00:39:49:13 - 00:40:11:06
Cas Piancey
And just I like I think most people are familiar with Steve Bannon. He's an evil man. He's a chaos agent. I don't know what else to call him other than someone who, similar to like, Peter Thiel, wants to see the world burn because he thinks it will be profitable for him. And I don't even know if he would deny any of what I just said.

00:40:11:06 - 00:40:13:13
Cas Piancey
I think he would be fine with that description.

00:40:13:13 - 00:40:27:04
Cas Piancey
these ramifications to me are quite powerful because Steve Bannon and Jeffrey Epstein become very good friends and very, very quickly, Epstein calls him a pretty smart puppet master.

00:40:27:04 - 00:40:59:13
Bennett Tomlin
Well, and at the time of Jeffrey Epstein's death, Steve Bannon was in the process of creating a documentary that it seems, though, again, we're speculating a little bit here, it seems, was kind of meant to slot Jeffrey Epstein into the same kind of right wing, eccentric who may have done some sex crimes space that, like Peter Thiel, often fills nowadays.

00:40:59:13 - 00:41:06:19
Cas Piancey
I mean, everyone's seen it. There's a picture of Steve Bannon and Jeffrey Epstein taking a selfie together and in front of a mirror.

00:41:06:19 - 00:41:25:03
Cas Piancey
Like, these guys became really good friends and, and I, I think it's, it's fair to say that Steve Bannon probably influenced Jeffrey Epstein, but I think Jeffrey Epstein also influenced Steve Bannon and a lot of the despicable, disgusting.

00:41:25:03 - 00:41:56:06
Cas Piancey
Missions he's accomplished, whether it be through the Trump administration or otherwise. I assume some of those ideas came from Jeffrey Epstein. So, I mean, I think, I think this is probably the most damaging for, for the rest of us, this is the one of the more damaging relationships that occurs. Just based on the level of influence that Steve Bannon has at the time.

00:41:56:08 - 00:42:07:07
Cas Piancey
And who he knows. Right. So I, I, I, I look at this and it, it freaks me out. I don't know how to say it otherwise it freaks me out that they were besties.

00:42:07:07 - 00:42:34:02
Bennett Tomlin
Part of my difficulty in discussing some parts of these files is it is very easy to sound like a conspiracy theorist, to sound like you're describing a right wing conspiracy that cannot actually exist, right? That Bannon was so involved with, like getting the Brexit movement started, and then Peter Thiel and Jeffrey Epstein are emailing each other to celebrate when Brexit passes.

00:42:34:08 - 00:43:04:03
Bennett Tomlin
And Bannon is doing this documentary for Epstein and Epstein is convincing, moot to reopen /pol/ which leads to, like, Nick Fuentes and the groypers and a whole bunch of the like, oh, great damage that they ended up doing. And like, it is literally a right wing conspiracy. And I think in some sense they've probably been more successful than they imagined they would be when they were taking many of these individual actions.

00:43:04:05 - 00:43:39:17
Bennett Tomlin
But like, it is disturbing to see them so openly plot the downfall of civilization effectively. Like when, Epstein is messaging Peter Thiel about Brexit. Jeffrey Epstein says it's just the beginning. And Peter Thiel is like the beginning of what? And so Jeffrey Epstein is like the return to tribalism. Amazing new alliances. You and I both agreed zero interest rates were too high, which I don't know what he means by that.

00:43:39:17 - 00:43:59:08
Bennett Tomlin
He wanted negative interest rates like, yeah, yeah, maybe he did. Right. Maybe they really he had fully committed to Bitcoin at that point. I, I don't understand the economics of what he's suggesting there to say zero interest rates are too high.

00:43:59:10 - 00:44:06:05
Cas Piancey
Like a lot of people have pushed put forward the idea of, negative interest rates, you know.

00:44:06:06 - 00:44:20:15
Bennett Tomlin
Sure. And they're used sometimes they're used sometimes like, the European Commission uses them. And the Bank of Japan has used them at times. They are an important part of modern central bank theory. However, generally.

00:44:20:19 - 00:44:21:05
Cas Piancey
Right.

00:44:21:09 - 00:44:37:20
Bennett Tomlin
You don't go zero is too high. Right. And there's especially in the United States, a lot of economists tend to think that the long period of extended, very historically low interest rates may have led to some malinvestment.

00:44:37:20 - 00:44:53:08
Bennett Tomlin
Broadly like like you're saying, it's just so unpleasant to see like a pedophile at a center of a right wing conspiracy to destroy so many of the institutions that are important to our world.

00:44:53:10 - 00:44:55:10
Bennett Tomlin
And they seem to be succeeding.

00:44:55:16 - 00:45:10:10
Cas Piancey
Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's something, I will say that as I spent days and days and days going through the Epstein files, and, and I really do think if you have the stomach for it, I urge people to look people up and try to at least like.

00:45:10:10 - 00:45:31:14
Cas Piancey
Do some. I'm not saying become a citizen journalist. I don't want to push more people to do that, because a lot of people are terrible at doing journalism. And it makes it harder for anyone who's good at it. But I do think it's worth looking at some of this stuff with your own eyes because it's real. These are not conspiracy theories.

00:45:31:14 - 00:45:40:05
Cas Piancey
Like, we have the information. It's right there. It's from years ago. This is not being changed. And altered outside of being redacted poorly.

00:45:40:05 - 00:45:54:07
Cas Piancey
there is no conspiracy. Jeffrey Epstein was human trafficking. He was using the elites and rich people that he knew to help him do human trafficking.

00:45:54:07 - 00:46:11:21
Cas Piancey
The idea that there's old men with money going around the world finding women and shipping them off to an island. It sounds insane. It sounds insane. It sounds like something someone in a mental institution would say.

00:46:11:23 - 00:46:21:06
Bennett Tomlin
It sounds like the Pizzagate nonsense, right? Like the stuff QAnon believed about cosmic pizza and stuff, but like, it's real happen.

00:46:21:11 - 00:46:46:03
Cas Piancey
Yeah. It's real. And that's I like that is why I just want people I my I can't tell you how many times I would be looking through these files and my jaw would just drop and I would go, no fucking way, no way. They're saying this shit in an email. No way. You're taking notes on a fucking criminal conspiracy.

00:46:46:05 - 00:47:16:13
Cas Piancey
What are you doing? We've had this discussion so many times, but the it's I'm, you know, I'm glad they did it because they're they're all getting caught now, but you'd think these powerful, wealthy men would know better. But this is they're doing something really stupid. And I don't know what that says. I don't know what that says about the world that we live in.

00:47:16:15 - 00:47:27:08
Cas Piancey
I don't know what that says about what the powerful and elites are actually like. I don't, you know, and obviously this isn't everyone. This is like, you don't you're not going to find every name in here.

00:47:27:08 - 00:47:33:06
Cas Piancey
But you're going to find a lot of them. And a lot of them were real chummy with him, including Brock Pierce.

00:47:33:08 - 00:47:54:05
Cas Piancey
So the final thing I want to say, and if you want to, like, do you want to you we can get into some of this other stuff. But the real the final thing I want to personally say is that the most damning part about this, whether you want to say nothing illegal, is shown in the emails, nothing, nothing criminal happened necessarily.

00:47:54:05 - 00:48:23:02
Cas Piancey
Jeffrey Epstein was a known convicted pedophile in 2008. Everyone knew it was big news. By 2010, everyone and their mom knew exactly who Jeffrey Epstein was and what he was accused of and what he was convicted of. And yet, Brock Pierce and a lot of people like him chose to instead of distancing themselves from him, instead of being like, oh, that's a creep.

00:48:23:02 - 00:48:51:01
Cas Piancey
I don't want anything to do with him. They became his best friend, Brock Pierce knew Jeffrey Epstein basically until the day he got arrested again. They were sending emails back and forth through 2019, eight years as best friends. That says a lot about Brock, Pierce says a lot about him and his character and what he cares about. It's not good.

00:48:51:03 - 00:49:12:22
Cas Piancey
None of this is good. I don't care if it's illegal at this point. I just don't care. This is atomic reputational damage. It should be. If it's not, if this guy is not castigated and shunned for for what he's done, I don't know. I don't know what we're doing.

00:49:12:22 - 00:49:46:14
Bennett Tomlin
I agree, I think the most damning thing about the files, like we've kind of already said in this episode, is the fact that they expose the broad willingness of so many people to continue to interface with this pedophile, with this sexual predator. And that's clearly Brock Pierce, right? He becomes quite literally friends with him. But I think it's also like we have said Coinbase.

00:49:46:16 - 00:50:18:04
Bennett Tomlin
It's Brian Armstrong and Fred Ersham. It is so many of these individuals who do the due diligence who ask, who is this guy who look this guy up and say, oh, okay. It was only one time he got convicted of being a pedophile and decide, it's $3 million. I'm not going to say no to $3 million. And in the process, by being willing to accept this predator into their ranks, they further enriched this pedophile.

00:50:18:04 - 00:50:40:05
Bennett Tomlin
They provided him with more connections, more opportunity, and more plausible deniability, because other people who were now being introduced to Epstein saw him as already being friends and being connected with these people. So new people were like, well, I guess I don't have the full story. All these other people surely must have the full story if they think this is okay.

00:50:40:10 - 00:51:11:08
Bennett Tomlin
And because of that, Epstein became richer, Epstein became more powerful, and Epstein continued to be able to perpetrate sex crimes against children for years. And that is in large part thanks to people like Brock Pierce, thanks to people like Brian Armstrong, thanks to people like Fred Ehrsham, even if they never saw Epstein commit a single crime, knowing he was the criminal and being able to see his game in that way, they helped enrich and empower him.

00:51:11:10 - 00:51:34:17
Cas Piancey
100, possibly over $100 million that Epstein earned from that Coinbase investment. Think about that. Brock Pierce Coinbase helped Jeffrey Epstein possibly make over $100 million. That says everything right. And lastly, I know that CasCoin is repeatedly mentioned in the Epstein files, but

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