Vitalik Buterin Donates 100 ETH To Tornado Cash Campaign Following Memecoin Offload

Ethereum (ETH) co-founder Vitalik Buterin has drawn much applause by donating a substantial amount of assets in legal aid of the Tornado Cash developers. Notably, this act comes after the prominent crypto figure stirred the market’s attention with a massive sell-off from his memecoin holdings.

Vitalik Buterin Supports Tornado Cash Founders With $242,000 ETH

In an X post on Saturday, Wu blockchain reported that Vitalik Buterin swapped different amounts of memecoins in his wallet for about 140.6 ETH valued at $340,000. The tokens sold included 70.71 million Neiro, 11.76 billion MOONDENG, 7.8 million DEGEN, 16.03 billion KABOSU, as well as 100,000 USDT donated by the CATE project. 

Following these transactions, blockchain analytics platform Spot on Chain noted that 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 valued then at $112,000 by Buterin in May to the same cause. 

Pertsev and Storm are two of the three founders of the crypto mixer platform Tornado Cash which has come under criticism by national authorities as a tool for enabling criminal activities. According to the US Department of Justice, Tornado Cash has facilitated over $1 billion in money laundering since its launch in 2019.

Currently, both developers are stuck in legal battles with Pertsev serving a five-year sentence in the Netherlands while Roman Storm is awaiting trial in the US following his arrest in August 2023. Meanwhile, the location of the third co-founder Roman Semenov remains unknown. It is currently uncertain if Buterin had diverted the profits from his memecoin sale to the “Free Alexey & Roman” defense campaign. However, the Ethereum co-founder has a history of offloading memecoins to donate to a charitable cause. 

Notably in August, Buterin sold off his entire holdings of 17.15 billion Neiro for around 44.42 ETH valued then at $119,000, before donating 200 ETH worth $532,398 to a certain animal welfare fund chosen by the Neiro development team.

Tornado Cash Developers Retain Robust Support From Crypto Community 

Tornado Cash is a well-known decentralized platform that mixes crypto assets to obscure their transaction history. It has previously been utilized by hackers and malicious actors in attempts to launder money and conceal stolen funds. This use of Tornado Cash has led to national authorities arresting Alexey Pertsev and Roman Storm on charges of aiding money laundering, by creating, operating, and promoting Tornado Cash. 

So far, this enforcement action has been met with much opposition from the crypto community who claim that developers cannot dictate the individual use of protocol and are not responsible for the actions of these bad actors.  Aside from Vitalik Buterin, other prominent crypto entities such as Matter Labs and the Uniwao DAO have made substantial donations of $100,000 and $1.5 million to the legal defense fund of these developers.

For many crypto enthusiasts, these legal cases are quite pivotal as an affirmative victory by the government could disenfranchise developers’ participation in the crypto industry. At the time of writing, data from Juicebox shows the defense fund for Alexey Pertsev holds 56.19 ETH worth $135,230 while 327.41 ETH valued at $787,967 has been pledged to the defense of Roman Storm.

Featured image from Harvard International Review, chart from Tradingview