Bitrabo Editorial
Vitalik Buterin, co-founder of Ethereum, has received widespread praise for his generous donation aimed at supporting the legal defense of Tornado Cash developers. This follows his recent notable sell-off of memecoins that captured the attention of the cryptocurrency market.
Buterin Donates $242,000 in ETH to Support Tornado Cash Developers
According to a post on X by Wu Blockchain, Buterin converted several of his memecoin holdings into approximately 140.6 ETH, worth around $340,000, on Saturday. The sale included significant amounts of various tokens such as 70.71 million Neiro and 11.76 billion MOONDENG, among others, along with a donation of 100,000 USDT from the CATE project.
Subsequently, analytics platform Spot on Chain reported that Buterin contributed 100 ETH, roughly $242,000, to the legal fund supporting Tornado Cash developers, Alexey Pertsev and Roman Storm. This donation followed a previous gift of 30 ETH, valued at $112,000, made by Buterin in May for the same initiative.
Pertsev and Storm are among the founders of Tornado Cash, a crypto mixer platform that has faced scrutiny from government authorities for allegedly facilitating criminal activities. The U.S. Department of Justice claims that Tornado Cash has enabled over $1 billion in money laundering since its inception in 2019.
Currently, both developers are embroiled in legal issues, with Pertsev serving a five-year sentence in the Netherlands and Storm awaiting trial in the U.S. after his arrest in August 2023. The fate of the third co-founder, Roman Semenov, remains unknown. While it is unclear if Buterin’s recent donation stemmed from profits from his memecoin sales, he has a history of selling these assets for charitable causes.
In a previous instance, Buterin sold his entire 17.15 billion Neiro holdings for approximately 44.42 ETH, which he later donated—200 ETH, equivalent to about $532,398—to an animal welfare fund selected by the Neiro development team.
Support for Tornado Cash Developers Grows Within the Crypto Community
The decentralized platform Tornado Cash is designed to mix cryptocurrencies, obscuring their transaction history. However, it has been misused by rogue actors for money laundering and hiding illicit funds, prompting legal action against Pertsev and Storm for their involvement in creating and promoting the platform.
These enforcement actions have faced considerable pushback from the crypto community, which argues that developers should not be held accountable for how others use their protocols. Alongside Buterin, other significant crypto entities such as Matter Labs and the Uniwao DAO have contributed $100,000 and $1.5 million, respectively, to the developers’ legal defense fund.
These legal proceedings are crucial for many in the crypto space, as a favorable outcome for the government could hinder future involvement by developers in the sector. As of now, data from Juicebox shows that the defense fund for Alexey Pertsev has amassed 56.19 ETH worth approximately $135,230, while 327.41 ETH, valued at around $787,967, has been pledged for the defense of Roman Storm.