Blockchain Campaign Turns Epstein File Obsession Into Funding for Women’s Shelter

A crypto founder known for one of the art world’s most provocative stunts has launched a new blockchain-powered campaign, this time with a very different goal: raising money for a Brooklyn shelter serving women and girls fleeing violence, trafficking and misconduct.

Anthony Anzalone, better known in some circles as “Burnt Banksy,” has teamed up with Asiyah Women’s Center founder Dania Darwish on a campaign that blends satire, privacy technology and charity in a way that is hard to ignore.

The project, built with XION’s blockchain infrastructure, centers on a website called TheRedactedFile.com, where visitors can cryptographically verify that they were not included in the Epstein files, all without handing over personal data. Those who pass the verification can even buy a T-shirt reading, “I wasn’t in the Epstein files and all I got was this lousy shirt.” Every dollar from the campaign goes directly to Asiyah.

The premise is intentionally absurd, but the cause behind it is anything but. Asiyah was founded in 2018 by Darwish after she learned that Muslim and BIPOC women escaping domestic violence in New York City often had nowhere that felt safe enough to take them in.

For some, the only alternative was sleeping in mosques rather than entering shelters where they feared discrimination or a lack of cultural understanding. Darwish, who previously worked at Amnesty International, UN Women and in Senator Kirsten Gillibrand’s office, built Asiyah to fill that gap.

Since then, the organization has housed more than 1,000 women and children. Now, just as demand for its services remains high, the shelter has lost federal funding, making the campaign’s timing especially urgent.

The Scale of the Broader Crisis is Sobering

According to international estimates cited by the campaign, roughly 50 million people are living in modern slavery worldwide. Women and girls account for 71% of trafficking victims globally, while child trafficking has risen sharply in the years since the pandemic.

In the United States, the National Human Trafficking Hotline handled nearly 17,000 potential victims in 2023. And in two out of five countries, no trafficking convictions have ever been recorded. The statistics paint a bleak picture of a problem that is both widespread and deeply under-addressed.

That is exactly the point Anzalone and Darwish are trying to make: the people most affected by these failures are usually the least visible, and the systems meant to protect them are often the first to lose support. In that sense, the campaign is less about a joke and more about using the joke to force attention where it is rarely given.

Anzalone is no stranger to attention-grabbing symbolism. He previously made headlines by burning a Banksy painting worth $95,000, a gesture meant to challenge assumptions about digital art and value. This time, he is using that same instinct for disruption to help fund a shelter.

XION, the blockchain network behind the project, has already been adopted by nearly 100 global brands, and Anzalone says he raised $36 million to build the privacy-focused infrastructure that powers the campaign.

The campaign’s visual language may be playful, but its message is pointed. The joke draws people in, the verification mechanic gives the campaign a tech-driven hook, and the T-shirt becomes a fundraising tool. What remains at the center, though, is the work of helping survivors get safe housing and support when they need it most.

Darwish put the challenge plainly: survivors cannot pause their healing because funding priorities shift. That reality, more than the novelty of the campaign, is what gives the project its weight.

Anzalone and Darwish are not pretending they can solve a crisis as large as trafficking, domestic abuse or modern slavery with a T-shirt and a website. But they are trying to do something less common and perhaps just as valuable: make people stop, pay attention and give.