Ethereum co-creator Vitalik Buterin has donated hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of ETH to Alexey Pertsev, a developer of Tornado Cash, a crypto mixer once approved by the US government.
According to Etherscan data reported by crypto reporter Colin Wu, Buterin donated a total of 100 ETH to Pertsev twice, allowing him to pay the legal fees.
“[Vitalik] today donated 50 ETH, worth approximately $170,000, to Juicebox: Support Alexey Pertsev Currently, Juicebox: Support Alexey Pertsev has raised over 184 ETH. Alexey Pertsev is a Tornado Cash developer and is looking for more money to pay for ongoing legal fees.
[Vitalik] donated another 50 ETH to Juicebox: Support Alexey Pertsev today, a total of 100 ETH, worth approximately $340,000.”
An X-page dedicated to helping the Tornado Cash developers publicly thanked Buterin for the donation.
In May 2024, Pertsev was sentenced by a Dutch court to five years and four months in prison for allegedly laundering billions of dollars.
The US banned the use of Tornado Cash in 2022 due to national security concerns. However, a US appeals court sided with Tornado Cash last November and essentially overturned the ban, saying the Treasury Department’s actions against Tornado Cash were unlawful.
The judge in the case ruled that smart contracts do not technically qualify as “property” and thus the ban under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act – which allows the president to acquire “any property in which a foreign country or a national thereof has any interest” block’. ‘- was an excess of power.
Don’t miss a beat – Subscribe to receive email alerts straight to your inbox
Check price action
Follow us further XFacebook and Telegram
Surf to the Daily Hodl mix
Generated image: DALLE3