Vitalik Buterin donates 100 ETH to Tornado Cash campaign after Memecoin download

Ethereum (ETH) co-founder Vitalik Buterin has received a lot of applause for donating a substantial amount of assets in legal aid to the developers of Tornado Cash. Notably, this act comes after the prominent crypto figure sparked market attention with a massive sell-off of his memecoin holdings.

Vitalik Buterin supports Tornado Cash founders with $242,000 ETH

in a X Saturday postWu blockchain reported that Vitalik Buterin exchanged different amounts of memecoins in his wallet for approximately 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, the blockchain analysis 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 then valued at $112,000 by Buterin in May to the same cause.

Pertsev and Storm are two of the three founders of cryptocurrency mixing platform Tornado Cash, which has been criticized by national authorities as a tool to enable criminal activity. 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 locked in legal battles with Pertsev. service a five-year sentence in the Netherlands while Roman Storm is awaiting trial in the United States following his arrest in August 2023. Meanwhile, the location of the third co-founder, Roman Semenov, is unknown. It is currently unclear whether Buterin had diverted the proceeds from his memecoin sale to the “Free Alexey and Roman” advocacy campaign. However, the Ethereum co-founder has a history of downloading memecoins to donate to a charitable cause.

Notably, in August, Buterin sold all of his 17.15 billion Neiro holdings for around 44.42 ETH then valued 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 Maintain Strong Crypto Community Support

Tornado Cash is a well-known decentralized platform that combines crypto assets to hide your transaction history. has previously been used by hackers and malicious actors in attempts to launder money and hide stolen funds. This use of Tornado Cash has 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 enforcement action has been met with much opposition from the crypto community, who claim that developers cannot dictate individual use of the protocol and are not responsible for the actions of these bad actors. In addition to Vitalik Buterin, other prominent crypto entities such as Matter Labs and Uniwao DAO have made substantial donations of $100,000 and $1.5 million to these developers’ legal defense fund.

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

Featured image from Harvard International Review, chart from Tradingview