Escape from Leviathan: Epstein, Silicon Valley, and Sovereign Individuals

Whether it’s immortality or interstellar colonization, they are the latest versions of the “Escape Plan.”

Written by: Sleepy.txt

Over the past hundred years, super-rich elites have been searching for the same thing: an extraterritorial haven where money can completely escape the scrutiny of sovereign nations.

In the early 20th century, they found Swiss bank accounts.

The 1934 Swiss Banking Law mandated bank confidentiality, with violators facing criminal prosecution. Wealthy individuals could deposit assets in accounts known only to a few senior bank officials, evading their home countries’ taxes and legal scrutiny.

This system operated for 74 years until 2008, when the IRS issued a “John Doe” summons, demanding UBS Group to provide account information for approximately 52,000 American clients.

The following year, UBS paid a $780 million fine and handed over some client lists.

As underground safes no longer felt secure, capital quickly shifted to tax havens under the sun.

Mid-century, offshore centers in the Caribbean began to rise. Cayman Islands, Bermuda, British Virgin Islands—these scattered islands in the blue ocean, with zero taxes and lax regulation, became playgrounds for multinational corporations and the wealthy to register shell companies and hide assets.

This system lasted about 50 years until 2014, when the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) released the “Common Reporting Standard,” requiring global financial institutions to automatically exchange non-resident client account information. By 2024, over 170 million accounts were forced to be exposed, involving assets totaling €13 trillion. In tax authorities’ systems worldwide, they became fully transparent.

Sunlight pierced through the coconut groves of the Caribbean, illuminating treasures hidden in shadows.

The lifespan of offshore havens for each generation is shrinking. Swiss banks lasted 74 years, Caribbean offshore centers about 50. As regulatory nets tighten, the wealthy desperately seek new hiding places.

In August 2019, Epstein was found dead in a Manhattan jail cell. More than the mystery surrounding his death, his legacy is a specimen of an era, precisely illustrating how the wealthy switch to another vessel.

In the physical world, he owned Little St. James Island. Equipped with a port, airport, and independent power grid, it was a classic old-style refuge—a tangible extrajudicial territory. He indeed made himself and others into outlaws on this small island.

In the digital world, he had already begun a new layout. From funding Bitcoin developers, investing in infrastructure, to lobbying regulatory policies, Epstein extended his tentacles into cryptocurrency. Clearly, in his eyes, this virtual refuge was more worth betting on than the physical island.

The 2015 Bitcoin crisis and the tightening of regulations in 2026 mark the latest round of this century-long cat-and-mouse game.

Dirty Money

In April 2015, the Bitcoin Foundation—once regarded as the central bank of the Bitcoin ecosystem—admitted in an open letter that it had effectively gone bankrupt.

Founded in 2012 by early Bitcoin believers and evangelists, including Satoshi’s “successor,” chief scientist Gavin Andresen, and later dubbed “Bitcoin Jesus,” Roger Ver, among others.

Its mission was to fund core developers’ salaries, organize conferences, promote technology, and provide some form of official endorsement for this rapidly growing digital currency.

However, this centralized organization in a decentralized world fell apart within three years due to corruption, internal conflicts, and management chaos.

Its founding board member and then-CEO of Mt. Gox, the world’s largest Bitcoin exchange at the time, Mark Karpeles, was imprisoned after the exchange’s collapse and the disappearance of 850,000 Bitcoins; vice-chair Charlie Shrem was sentenced to two years for money laundering.

With the foundation collapsing, the livelihoods of five core developers became a major issue. They maintained code supporting hundreds of billions in market value, yet in reality, they couldn’t even draw salaries.

In April 2015, just as the Bitcoin community was worried, MIT Media Lab announced the launch of the “Digital Currency Initiative.” They swiftly brought in Gavin Andresen, Cory Fields, and Vladimir Vanderlan, all core figures.

Founded in 1985, this interdisciplinary lab was known for pioneering research and close collaborations with the business and wealthy elites, becoming a “white knight” for Bitcoin developers.

But this white knight’s money was not clean.

At the time, the director of MIT Media Lab was Joi Ito, a renowned Japanese-American investor who had wielded influence in Silicon Valley, early investments in Twitter and Flickr.

According to a 2019 investigation by The New Yorker, it was Joi Ito who decided to use Epstein’s money to fund the “Digital Currency Initiative.”

Between 2013 and 2017, Epstein directly donated $525,000 to MIT Media Lab. But that was just the tip of the iceberg. Epstein claimed he helped MIT raise at least $7.5 million from other wealthy donors, including $2 million from Bill Gates. These funds were cleverly marked as anonymous, completely hiding Epstein’s influence.

This money shouldn’t have been accessible. Due to Epstein’s sex abuse case in 2008, he had long been blacklisted by MIT. But Joi Ito exploited a “gift fund” loophole, bypassing the school’s scrutiny to launder the dirty money in. He even sent emails instructing colleagues that this money must remain anonymous.

Joi Ito was a master of leverage. In another email to Epstein, he pointed out the “sweet spot” of Bitcoin’s power: although claimed to be decentralized, the power to control the code’s life and death was actually in the hands of five individuals. MIT not only got involved but also absorbed three of them.

Epstein’s reply was brief but meaningful: “Gavin is a smart guy.”

Implying he had bought the right person. By controlling people, they quietly gained control over the code.

This is the power of top-tier institutions: they can coat the dirtiest money in the brightest gold. A convicted sex offender, suddenly transformed into a behind-the-scenes benefactor of Bitcoin’s core circle. The “visiting scholar” alias allowed him to enter the top labs unimpeded, mingling with the world’s brightest minds.

In 2014, Epstein also invested $500,000 in Bitcoin infrastructure company Blockstream, founded by Bitcoin core developers Adam Back, Gregory Maxwell, and Pieter Wuille.

Technology can be decentralized, but funds always have sources. To survive, the decentralized utopia had to accept centralized funding—after all, money talks.

Epstein’s logic was simple: first, let Bitcoin survive; then, steer its development in his preferred direction.

By funding core developers’ salaries, he not only saved a collapsing technology but also bought influence over its future. Joi Ito used his money to persuade three developers to join MIT, in effect giving Epstein’s funds control over the majority of Bitcoin’s technical decisions.

With influence comes the power to define.

When Satoshi Nakamoto designed Bitcoin, he emphasized technical decentralization—no reliance on banks or central servers.

But once people like Peter Thiel and Epstein got involved, it took on a more radical ideological tone—more than just technological innovation, it became a challenge to national sovereignty, a tool for “sovereign individuals” to escape constraints.

When you fund those maintaining the code, you gain the power to define what this technology “is.” Technology itself is neutral, but whoever holds the discourse has the say over whom it serves.

So, what is Epstein really after in betting on cryptocurrencies?

Silicon Valley’s Secret Dinner

Epstein was not just doing venture capital; he was hunting for kindred spirits. He keenly sensed a larger network beneath the surface, a small circle of top elites.

In August 2015, at a private dinner in Palo Alto, California, this shadowy circle finally surfaced.

Organized by LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, the dinner featured luminaries: Jeffrey Epstein, Joi Ito, Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, and Peter Thiel.

At that moment, just a few months after MIT’s use of Epstein’s money to co-opt Bitcoin developers, none of these individuals had yet become involved in cryptocurrency. But all of them later became believers. Clearly, this was no ordinary social gathering.

Within this circle, Peter Thiel was undoubtedly the spiritual leader. As co-founder of PayPal, early investor in Facebook, and founder of big data company Palantir, he was already a Silicon Valley legend.

By 2017, when Bitcoin hovered around $6,000, Thiel’s Founders Fund quietly invested $15–20 million. Before the 2022 crypto bear market, this investment yielded about $1.8 billion in returns. In 2023, he again bet $200 million, buying Bitcoin and Ethereum. Every move was precisely timed on the eve of a bull run.

Making money was just a side effect; what Thiel truly loved was the political metaphor behind Bitcoin. To him, it was the true successor of PayPal, finally realizing that wild dream—creating a new world currency beyond government control.

The roots of this idea trace back to a book published in 1997, later revered as a Bible by Silicon Valley elites: “The Sovereign Individual.”

Authored by James Dale Davidson and William Rees-Mogg, its core thesis was: the information age would herald the twilight of nation-states. The “cognitive elite” would shed the constraints of geography, evolving into “sovereign individuals” above nations. It not only accurately predicted the rise of “digital, encrypted currencies” but also directly sentenced national power to death, asserting that such currencies would dismantle the monopoly of sovereign minting.

For Thiel, this is his spiritual totem. He once admitted to Forbes that no book reshaped his worldview more than “The Sovereign Individual.” In 2009, he wrote in an article: “I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible.”

Since he no longer trusts existing systems, only total departure remains. This obsession explains why Thiel is so fascinated with tools that can escape state power.

Before embracing Bitcoin, he funded the “Seasteading” project.

Launched by Nobel laureate Milton Friedman’s grandson, the project aimed to build floating cities on international waters—utopias beyond national jurisdiction, where people could freely choose laws and governments like shopping at a supermarket. Though seemingly fantastical, Thiel invested $1.7 million without hesitation. But the project was eventually halted by technical bottlenecks, funding shortages, and local protests.

Since they couldn’t build Noah’s Ark in the physical world, they turned to the digital realm to find a new continent.

In 2014, Epstein and Thiel met through Reid Hoffman. In 2016, Epstein invested $40 million in Thiel’s venture capital firm Valar Ventures.

That same year, Thiel took a risky step—publicly supporting Trump at the Republican National Convention. This gamble propelled him into the core circle of power transition. Overnight, he transformed from a Silicon Valley investor into a key bridge connecting the tech world and the White House.

Behind these dinners and investments was a mysterious organization called Edge Foundation.

Founded by John Brockman, this nonprofit plays the typical circle game. An email list exposed in 2011 listed Epstein alongside Bezos, Musk, Google founders Brin and Page, and Zuckerberg.

Under the banner of scientific and intellectual exchange, it brought together the world’s top minds. But in reality, it was an exclusive elite club. Members exchanged intelligence via private emails and offline gatherings, outside the public eye, consolidating interests and unified stances.

If Davos is the stage for the world’s show, then Edge Foundation is the backstage. All technological bets and political alignments were coordinated here. In their view, Bitcoin is not just an asset but a weapon.

Sovereign Illusions

Whether a private island or Bitcoin, they are essentially manifestations of the same ideology: escaping the constraints of democratic states. The former creates an extrajudicial territory in physical space; the latter constructs a sovereign domain in digital space.

From Swiss bank accounts to Bitcoin public keys, the wealthy have been seeking new digital codes to hide assets. Swiss banking secrecy is protected by banking confidentiality laws and professional ethics, while the anonymity of public keys relies on cryptography and decentralized networks. Both promise privacy but are ultimately overtaken by regulation.

The “freedom” Joi Ito talks about has nothing to do with you and me.

According to the “World Inequality Report” published by the end of 2025, the wealth controlled by the top 0.001% (fewer than 60,000 people) is three times that of the poorest half of the world’s population (about 4 billion people). By 2025, global billionaire wealth grew by 16%, three times the average growth rate of the past five years, reaching a record €18.3 trillion.

This is the true face of the “freedom” they pursue: a world where wealth and power are infinitely concentrated in a few “sovereign individuals,” leaving billions behind.

They champion Bitcoin not to improve the lives of ordinary people but to completely free themselves from any social responsibility and wealth redistribution.

This narrative, framing technology as a “counter-government tool” rather than a “public interest tool,” is widespread in Silicon Valley’s libertarian circles.

In fact, blockchain technology could have another destiny. It could be a mirror to scrutinize government spending, to monitor voting. But when these elites turn it into a private backyard, this technology, meant to benefit the masses, is hijacked into a privilege channel for the few.

But reality soon dealt them a heavy blow: total escape is impossible. Whether hiding at sea or buried in code, the gravity of the physical world always exists. These clever people quickly realized that if they couldn’t run away, they might as well change tactics—rather than evade rules, why not buy the rule-makers?

In February 2018, an email to Steve Bannon sounded the alarm.

Steve Bannon, once a “White House strategist,” though recently out of Trump’s inner circle, still wields influence in Washington.

Epstein approached him without hesitation, demanding in an email: “Will the Treasury respond? Or do we need to take another route?”

Epstein’s urgency stemmed from a seemingly cooperative plan with regulators: a voluntary disclosure scheme.

On the surface, he claimed it was to help the government “catch bad guys,” making criminals untraceable; in reality, it was a golden ticket for the powerful. He hoped that by voluntarily reporting income and paying taxes, huge hidden wealth in cryptocurrencies could be legally pardoned.

In another email, Epstein wrote with panic: “Some bad stuff. Very bad.”

He knew better than anyone how many dark deals were buried beneath his wealth and that of this circle. He desperately needed a “voluntary disclosure” ticket, to whitewash himself and his friends before the regulatory axe fell.

This tactic was not new in Washington. After the UBS scandal in 2009, the IRS launched the Offshore Voluntary Disclosure Program. It allowed taxpayers with undeclared offshore accounts to avoid criminal charges by voluntary reporting, paying back taxes, and a penalty. Between 2009 and 2018, about 56,000 taxpayers participated, recovering roughly $11.6 billion in taxes.

Epstein’s plan was to replicate this money-laundering logic in the crypto world. His voluntary disclosure scheme aimed to use tax payments as leverage to legitimize illicit funds. This is the game elites excel at: as long as they can influence rulemakers, any dark past can be whitewashed into a whitelist.

Thiel’s level was evidently higher—he treated Washington as a Silicon Valley company to invest in.

In 2016, he donated $1.25 million to support Trump, successfully placing his disciple Michael Kratsios as Deputy CTO of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.

By 2022, he added another $15 million, helping put Wans into the Senate. This new senator was not only Thiel’s ally but also held millions of dollars worth of Bitcoin himself.

Got it? This has long surpassed ordinary political donations. These tech elites, believing in “sovereign individuals,” are placing their people into key positions, gradually seizing control of the state apparatus.

But the iron fist of regulation eventually struck.

On New Year’s Day 2026, the “Global Crackdown on Crypto” was officially launched with the “Crypto Asset Reporting Framework.” Over 50 countries synchronized efforts, with more than 20 following. It turned exchanges and wallets into informants for tax authorities, collecting detailed customer info and reporting it to the tax agencies of the respective countries. Through automatic exchange systems, this information is then shared among tax authorities, creating a global web targeting crypto tax issues.

The net is cast worldwide, sealing off the crypto asset tax loophole.

Epilogue

From Swiss banks to Bitcoin, this nearly century-long cat-and-mouse game finally hit a wall under the iron curtain of global regulation.

When the escape routes in the digital space are blocked, where will the new sovereign fantasies emerge?

This time, their ambitions are greater. Thiel is funding anti-aging and life extension technologies, trying to escape the ultimate constraint—death. Elon Musk dreams of colonizing Mars, betting humanity’s future on a brand-new planet.

These seemingly fantastical dreams are rooted in the prophecy of “The Sovereign Individual.” They aim to use technology to create a new world beyond nations and democracies. Whether immortality or interstellar colonization, they are the latest versions of the “Escape Plan.”

Epstein’s story is just a footnote in this grand narrative—a dirty but incredibly real footnote. It reveals how, when technology is detached from the public interest and becomes a tool for a few to pursue absolute freedom, it can produce the most evil fruits.

Right now, we must face this brutal reality: when the blueprint of the future is drawn at private dinners where we have no access, all rules become irrelevant to us.

When a tiny elite, unaccountable to anyone, can define our money, our society, and even our lives solely with their capital, what are we?

This is the real question this story leaves us—one without an answer, but one each of us must ponder.