Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin appears to have donated 30 ETH ($111,000) to Tornado Cash developer Alexey Pertsev’s legal defense fund through decentralized fundraising platform Juicebox, according to on-chain data.
The transaction was made to Juicebox’s “Free Alexey & Roman” legal fund at 1:58 a.m. EST from an address associated with Buterin called Vitalik.eth.
The fund has so far raised 591 ETH ($2.2 million) to provide legal help to the developers of Tornado Cash, a cryptocurrency mixer accused of money laundering.
This month, a Dutch court sentenced Alexey Pertsev to 64 months in prison for processing $1.2 billion through a cryptocurrency mixer between July 2019 and August 2022, concluding that he facilitated money laundering. I took it down.
The US-approved mixer obfuscates transactions on the Ethereum blockchain, allowing users to hide their tracks on the chain.
Roman Storm, another developer linked to Tornado Cash, has been detained in the United States since his arrest in 2023 and is scheduled for trial in September.
In 2022, Buterin donated 10 ETH (worth $30,980 at the time) to AssangeDAO, Juicebox’s legal fund, to support WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.
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