The latest released Epstein files contain a lot of insider information related to Bitcoin and the cryptocurrency industry. We previously provided a comprehensive overview in the article "Sorting through the Epstein Files, Discovering He Met Satoshi Nakamoto."
Today, we will discuss the "Bitcoin Hijacking Theory," which has gained renewed attention due to the Epstein files.
What is the "Bitcoin Hijacking Theory"?
The "Bitcoin Hijacking Theory" originates from Roger Ver's book published in 2024, titled "Hijacking Bitcoin: The Hidden History of BTC." This is the first time he systematically elaborates on the "Bitcoin Hijacking Theory" through the book's title and content.
The "Bitcoin Hijacking Theory" posits that Bitcoin has transformed from a "peer-to-peer electronic cash" system aimed at combating fiat currency hegemony into a speculative "digital gold." This shift not only deviates from the original mission that Satoshi Nakamoto assigned to Bitcoin but is also the result of various conspiracies (internal business interests, external funding such as Epstein's, and the U.S. government's efforts to maintain dollar hegemony). It suggests that "the development of Bitcoin is not natural and organic; it should have been a currency that people around the world could freely choose to use, but it has ultimately been dominated by the narrative of digital gold as a store of value."
Roger Ver believes that the decisions made by Bitcoin Core developers are not independent but influenced by external funding. In 2014-2015, the collapse of the Bitcoin Foundation left Bitcoin Core developers without stable salaries, and the Digital Currency Initiative (DCI) at the MIT Media Lab began paying several Bitcoin Core developers. As a result, three Bitcoin Core developers—Gavin Andresen, Wladimir van der Laan, and Cory Fields—decided to join the MIT Media Lab.
This information has become a hot topic of discussion again due to the latest disclosures from the Epstein files. However, it was already known to the public when MIT acknowledged receiving donations from Epstein in 2019. Roger Ver included this in his book as evidence of external funding influencing Bitcoin's development, even though the developers funded by MIT were unaware of the donation's source.
He also mentioned another Bitcoin Core developer, Adam Back, whose company Blockstream received funding from VCs like a16z. The congestion of the mainnet benefited the company's business, and commercial interests also led to Bitcoin being "hijacked," serving the sidechain/Bitcoin Layer 2 narrative.
During the "Block Size War," Bitcoin Core developers insisted on small blocks and rejected various scaling proposals. They publicly supported and pursued full blocks, high fees, and transaction congestion, believing this was a "natural state of market competition" that could eventually replace block rewards as incentives for miners to maintain network security.
Roger Ver argues that this ultimately led to Bitcoin transactions becoming slow, expensive, and unreliable, hindering the widespread adoption of Bitcoin as a global currency and everyday payment tool. He hopes Bitcoin can truly enter the lives of ordinary people, for buying coffee, clothes, or watching sports…
"If blocks are always full, it's as absurd as Starbucks deliberately running out of coffee every day. Block space is a consumable, and miners should meet the real usage demands of Bitcoin."
He also pointed out that Bitcoin, due to small block limitations, has had to turn to custodial wallets or solutions like the Lightning Network. Bitcoin has become a settlement layer rather than electronic cash. Moreover, whether custodial wallets or sidechains/Bitcoin Layer 2, they ultimately force users to rely on centralized services.
Proponents of large blocks lost the "Block Size War," and Roger Ver turned to BCH, which later split into BSV and XEC. However, did the small block proponents "win"? At that time, they believed that large blocks would dramatically increase the cost of running full Bitcoin nodes, making it unaffordable for ordinary people, leading to the validation rights of Bitcoin being controlled by governments, mining pools, large companies, and data centers.
But years later, the government's influence over Bitcoin continues to grow. The initially envisioned path of "decentralization first, payments can come later" has not developed ideally. Companies like Valve, Stripe, Dell, and Expedia once supported direct Bitcoin payments (without converting to fiat), but ultimately withdrew their support due to long transaction times, high fees, or low user willingness.
Now, no one is talking about Bitcoin's attributes as a world currency; the narrative of digital gold has become mainstream.
He further mentioned the involvement of the U.S. government, pointing out that U.S. intelligence agencies were interested in similar technologies even before Bitcoin's inception, citing the NSA's 1996 paper "How to Make a Mint: The Cryptography of Anonymous Electronic Cash" as evidence. This paper described an anonymous digital currency system similar to Bitcoin, which he believes indicates that the U.S. government may have been monitoring or attempting to influence Bitcoin's development early on to prevent it from truly threatening the national currency system.
In a 2024 interview, he further stated:
"As early as 2011, we knew the CIA was interested in Bitcoin because they had asked Bitcoin developers for information about it. The CIA had already started researching it when most people had never heard of Bitcoin.
But around 2012, a person claiming to be 'John Dylan' said he was a member of an intelligence agency and spent over $10,000 (a considerable amount) to create propaganda, trying to mislead people into believing that keeping Bitcoin blocks small would make it more decentralized. This was completely contrary to the facts and went against the original design intentions of Bitcoin's creator, Satoshi Nakamoto. At that time, the design concept and usage of Bitcoin were not like that. Initially, no one believed this propaganda.
Later, the Bitcoin community experienced a wave of significant censorship. Some anonymous individuals took control of all major Bitcoin discussion platforms, and overnight, any advocacy for using Bitcoin as a currency was banned. They censored all attempts to promote Bitcoin for payments. Initially, people could see through these operations, but as new users joined, they were indoctrinated with these censored ideas."
The Credibility of the "Bitcoin Hijacking Theory"
Roger Ver is an influential evangelist and builder in the early cryptocurrency industry, having started investing in Bitcoin in early 2011. He is the founder of Bitcoin.com, co-founder of Ripple and Blockchain.com, and a seed investor in Kraken. He actively promoted Bitcoin and cryptocurrency-related startups in their early days and was already a millionaire before investing in Bitcoin, yet he sold his Lamborghini to buy more Bitcoin. Thus, he earned the title "Bitcoin Jesus."
However, since the "Block Size War," he has long criticized small block advocates, Bitcoin Core developers, and Blockstream, while consistently supporting BCH. Therefore, his statements have often been met with ridicule in the Bitcoin community, such as "Roger is still looking for excuses for losing the war in 2017; BCH is the real hijacking of Bitcoin."
Until 2024, when he published his new book, he integrated various elements such as the "Block Size War," Epstein's funding of Bitcoin Core developers, the NSA paper, and potential U.S. government censorship of large block support into a complete "Bitcoin Hijacking Theory."
About three weeks after the book's publication, he was arrested in Spain on tax fraud charges, and the U.S. subsequently requested his extradition. The U.S. Department of Justice accused him of failing to report taxes on approximately $240 million in Bitcoin sold in 2017 (resulting in at least $48 million in losses for the IRS) and undervaluing his Bitcoin assets when he renounced his U.S. citizenship in 2014, facing a total of eight charges including mail fraud, tax evasion, and false tax reporting, with a maximum sentence of 109 years in prison.
In subsequent interviews, Roger Ver claimed that revealing the "truth about Bitcoin being hijacked" and the U.S. government's actions in this matter led to retaliation against him. However, the charges against him were known months before the book's publication; they only became public and led to his arrest after the book was released.
In October 2025, he reached a deferred prosecution agreement with the U.S. Department of Justice, and after paying approximately $49.9 million (taxes + fines + interest), the case was dismissed.
In summary, he has a stance (supporting large blocks and BCH), and there is no direct evidence showing that his arrest was due to "exposing the U.S. government's deliberate effort to downgrade Bitcoin from a currency to a speculative asset to maintain dollar hegemony." Nevertheless, he continues to assert his views despite misunderstanding and even attacks from the Bitcoin community, which cannot erase his contributions to Bitcoin in its early days. More importantly, his viewpoint that "Bitcoin has deviated from its original positioning, thus diminishing its value" has indeed garnered considerable recognition.
Peter Thiel, the founder of PayPal, explicitly stated in an interview last year that Bitcoin has deviated from its original intent of decentralization and resistance to the system, no longer serving as a revolutionary tool against the old system but rather being "co-opted" by it. Peter Thiel pointed out that FBI agents had told him they preferred criminals to use Bitcoin rather than dollars, indicating that Bitcoin has not achieved its intended anonymity and censorship resistance, but rather has become a tool that is easier to track. Although Bitcoin ETFs have introduced incremental market growth, this does not mean that traditional finance has bowed to cryptocurrency; rather, Bitcoin has been "co-opted" by traditional finance. The liberating technology that was supposed to disrupt fiat currency has ultimately become a mainstream financial product.
The latest disclosures from the Epstein files have caused a shock in thinking and cognition. This information was previously unimaginable and inaccessible, so when it was finally revealed, people who were shocked and stunned would "retaliate" by amplifying their imaginative space.
Roger Ver's "Bitcoin Hijacking Theory" has also begun to receive renewed attention, with some believing "he is right." @miyaspokeofthis even connected the death of Nikolai Mushegian (co-founder of MakerDAO and leader of WETH development) with Epstein, Tether co-founder Brock Pierce, and the "Bitcoin Hijacking Theory," writing a complete article on it.
I am reluctant to label all of this as a "conspiracy theory" because when a small part of evil suddenly exposes itself to the sunlight, no one can convince themselves, "Human nature is inherently good; I should not have more doubts."
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