Ethereum (ETH) co-founder Vitalik Buterin received a lot of applause by donating a large amount of assets to the legal aid of Tornado Cash developers. It is worth noting that this action comes after the prominent cryptocurrency figure attracted the attention of the market through a large-scale sale of his memcoin holdings.
Vitalik Buterin backs Tornado Cash founders with $242,000 in ETH
in X post on SaturdayWu Blockchain reported that Vitalik Buterin exchanged various amounts of memecoins in his wallet for around 140.6 ETH worth $340,000. The tokens sold included 70.71 million Neiro, 11.76 billion MOONDENG, 7.8 million DEGEN, and 16.03 billion KABOSU, in addition to 100,000 USDT donated by the CATE project.
After these transactions, the blockchain analytics platform Spot on Chain male The Ethereum co-founder contributed 100 ETH, worth $242,000, to the legal defense fund of Tornado Cash developers Alexey Pertsev and Roman Storm. This follows a previous donation of 30 ETH worth US$112,000 by Buterin in May for the same cause.
Burtsev and Storm are two of the three founders of cryptocurrency mixing platform Tornado Cash which has been criticized by national authorities as a tool for enabling criminal activities. According to the US Department of Justice, Tornado Cash has facilitated more than $1 billion in money laundering since its launch in 2019.
Currently, both developers are stuck in legal battles with Burtsev serving a five-year prison sentence in the Netherlands while Roman Storm is awaiting trial in the US following his arrest in August 2023. Meanwhile, the location of third co-founder Roman Semenov remains unknown. . It is currently uncertain whether Buterin transferred profits from the sale of his memecoin to the “Free Alexey & Roman” defense campaign. However, the Ethereum co-founder has a history of offloading memecoins to donate to a charitable cause.
In particular, in August, Buterin sold his entire holding of 17.15 billion naira for about 44.42 Ethereum worth $119,000, before that. Donate 200 ETH worth $532,398 to a specific animal welfare fund chosen by the Neiro development team.
Tornado Cash developers maintain strong support from the crypto community
Tornado Cash is a well-known decentralized platform that mixes crypto assets to hide its transaction history. It has previously been used by hackers and malicious actors in attempts to launder money and hide stolen funds. This use of Tornado Cash led national authorities to arrest Alexey Pertsev and Roman Storm on charges of aiding money laundering, through the creation, operation and promotion of Tornado Cash.
So far, this executive action has been met with significant opposition from the cryptocurrency community which claims that developers cannot dictate individual use of the protocol and are not responsible for the actions of these bad actors. Aside from Vitalik Buterin, other prominent crypto entities like Matter Labs and Uniwao DAO have made major donations of $100,000 and $1.5 million to the legal defense fund of these developers.
For many cryptocurrency enthusiasts, these legal issues are extremely pivotal because a positive victory by the government could disqualify developers from participating in the cryptocurrency industry. At the time of writing, data from Juicebox appears Alexei Burtsev Defense Fund You own 56.19 ETH worth $135,230 while 327.41 ETH worth $787,967 has been pledged. Defense of the Roman Storm.
Featured image from Harvard International Review, chart from Tradingview