Vitalik Buterin’s wallet donated 30 ETH to Juicebox for the legal defense of Tornado Cash developers, contributing to a fund of 591 ETH.
Thirty Ether, with a market value of $113,000, were transmitted from a wallet associated with Vitalik Buterin, co-founder of Ethereum, to Juicebox, an open-source cryptocurrency crowdfunding platform. The allocated funds were designated to provide legal support to the developers of Tornado Cash, Alexey Pertsev, and Roman Storm.
The fund, which has amassed approximately 591 Ether as of the date of this publication, will provide financial assistance to the developers of Tornado Cash in their judicial endeavor to establish their innocence.
Buterin, among other crypto veterans, has long advocated for crypto privacy and tools that enable users to privately administer their assets. Given his extensive publication record and provision of recommendations regarding the augmentation of privacy on Ethereum, Buterin’s endorsement of this cause is unsurprising.
Tornado Cash is a cryptocurrency privacy utility that enables anonymous crypto transactions. Despite its emphasis on privacy, the instrument is frequently employed by criminals to deal with compromised or stolen funds.
The tool’s characteristics garnered the interest of law enforcement agencies, culminating in the sanction of its usage by the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) of the United States Treasury in August 2022.
Founders of Tornado Cash were apprehended and indicted on charges of contravening anti-money laundering regulations. Subsequently, Alexey Pertsev was given a five-year sentence by a Dutch court about money laundering allegations.
Prominent authorities have cautioned that the pursuit of software developers by law enforcement agencies may have profound ramifications for the cryptocurrency sector.
Privacy-focused cryptocurrencies, including Monero, have been severely impacted by the law enforcement crackdown on crypto privacy; the coin has been delisted from major exchanges around the globe. Likewise, privacy tools have encountered regulatory disapproval.
On the contrary, the crypto community maintains the view that law enforcement agencies’ arrest of software developers for composing codes and equating them to terrorists is unjustified, notwithstanding any dissenting opinions regarding privacy.
Historically, the crypto community has supported human rights. It is among the most proactive communities in its demand for the release of the notorious Silk Road marketplace’s founder, Ross Ulbricht.
Ulbricht is presently incarcerated for two non-violent offenses with life sentences without the possibility of parole.
The attention garnered by the moment from former President Donald Trump, who pledged to pardon Ulbricht upon assuming the presidency, was aided by the crypto community’s input.