Ethereum founder uses cryptocurrency mixer to help Ukraine

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin said that he used the cryptocurrency mixer Tornado Cash to help Ukraine — Buterin sent donations for Ukrainians in digital assets.

According to Vitalik Buterin, Tornado Cash is used not only by fraudsters who want to launder money obtained as a result of hacker attacks, but also by well-meaning users. According to Buterin, he used the cryptocurrency mixer to transfer financial aid to Ukrainians (in April, he sent 1,500 ETH to the accounts of Ukrainian charities). The Ethereum co-founder took this step because he did not want the Russian government to have information about the transferred funds and to track Buterin’s actions.

Vitalik Buterin decided to talk about using the cryptocurrency mixer for charitable purposes after blockchain infrastructure services started blocking Tornado Cash. Thus, the providers of APIs and node infrastructure, which are considered to be the backbone of the Ethereum and Web3 ecosystems, started blocking remote procedure call (RPC) requests to Tornado Cash.

As a reminder, on Monday, August 8, the US imposed sanctions against Tornado Cash — the US Treasury Department banned American citizens and businesses from using the platform’s services. The cryptocurrency mixer was accused of laundering stolen cryptocurrency.