The founder of Ethereum (ETH) Vitalik Buterin has received a lot of applause for donating a large amount of assets to the legal aid of Tornado Cash developers. Notably, this move comes after a prominent crypto personality shook the market’s attention with a massive sale of his memecoin holdings.
Vitalik Buterin Backs Tornado Coin Founders With $242,000 ETH
In the X document on Saturday, Wu blockchain reported that Vitalik Buterin exchanged different amounts of memecoins in his wallet about 140.6 ETH with a value of $ 340,000. Tokens sold include 70.71 million Neiro, 11.76 billion MOONDENG, 7.8 million DEGEN, 16.03 billion KABOSU, and 100,000 USDT donated to the CATE project.
After this transaction, the blockchain analytics platform Spot on Chain noted that the founder of Ethereum donated 100 ETH, worth $ 242,000 to the legal protection fund of Tornado Cash developers Alexey Pertsev and Roman Storm. This follows a previous donation of 30 ETH valued at $112,000 by Buterin in May for the same reason.
Pertsev and Storm are two of the three founders of the crypto mixer platform Tornado Cash which has been criticized by national authorities as a tool to facilitate criminal activities. According to the US Department of Justice, Tornado Cash has helped more than $1 billion in money laundering since its launch in 2019.
Currently, both developers are embroiled in legal battles with Pertsev serving a five-year sentence in the Netherlands and Roman Storm awaiting trial in the US following his arrest in August 2023. Meanwhile, the whereabouts of the third co-founder Roman Semenov is unknown. . It is currently unclear whether Buterin diverted the profits from his sale of memecoin to the “Free Alexey & Roman” defense campaign. However, the founder of Ethereum has a history of releasing memecoins to donate to a charitable cause.
Notably, in August, Buterin sold his entire holding of 17.15 billion Neiro for about 44.42 ETH worth $119,000, before donating 200 ETH worth $532,398 to an animal welfare fund selected by the development team of Nero.
Tornado Coin Developers Maintain Strong Support From The Crypto Community
Tornado Cash is a well-known decentralized platform that combines crypto assets to hide their transaction history. In the past it was used by criminals and malicious actors in attempts to launder money and hide stolen funds. This use of Tornado Cash has led to national authorities arresting Alexey Pertsev and Roman Storm on charges of aiding and abetting money laundering, for creating, using, and promoting Tornado Cash.
So far, this enforcement action has met with a lot of opposition from the crypto community who say that the developers cannot determine the individual use of the protocol and are not responsible for the actions of these bad actors. Apart from Vitalik Buterin, other prominent crypto organizations such as Matter Labs and Uniwao DAO have made large donations of $100,000 and $1.5 million to the legal protection fund of these developers.
For many crypto-enthusiasts, these legal cases are very important as a confirmed government victory could deny the participation of developers in the crypto industry. At the time of writing, data from Juicebox shows that Alexey Pertsev’s defense fund holds 56.19 ETH worth $135,230 while 327.41 ETH worth 787,967 pledged to protect Roman Storm.
Featured image from Harvard International Review, chart from Tradingview