Vitalik Buterin Confesses: I Used That Controversial Altcoin!

Vitalik Buterin, the prolific creator of Ethereum, admitted that he used the now blacklisted privacy protocol Tornado Cash to donate to Ukraine.

Vitalik Buterin spoke about Tornado Cash

The Ethereum founder also used Tornado Cash (TC), which has attracted attention recently. Vitalik Buterin, the creator of Ethereum and a long-time advocate of privacy and decentralization, made a confession. Buterin announced that he used Tornado Cash to donate to Ukraine’s ongoing struggle.

Vitalik Buterin commented on a Twitter discussion outlining the benefits of financial privacy. In addition, Buterin expressed his views on legitimate Tornado Cash use cases, including donating to Ukraine without warning the Russian government. The Ethereum founder said he used the protocol to make a private donation to Ukraine.

“I will present myself as someone who has used TC to donate to exactly this cause,” Buterin wrote. The Russian-born programmer was asked if he concealed his transaction because he feared the government’s reaction. Buterin noted that he uses Tornado Cash to protect fund recipients rather than himself. The Ethereum founder said, “My intention was to protect buyers, not myself. The RU government already knows my position on the Ukraine issue,” he said. He linked to an old tweet in which he cursed Margarita Simonyan, Editor-in-Chief of the state-sponsored media company Russia Today.

Many companies choose to comply with the Tornado Cash ban

Buterin’s comments came a day after the US Treasury put Tornado Cash’s website and smart contracts on its sanctions list. As you follow from Kriptokoin.com, it effectively banned all American citizens and US-based companies from interacting with the protocol. In response, US-based stablecoin issuer Circle immediately blacklisted all addresses on the sanctions list. In this context, Tornado quickly froze approximately 75,000 USDC belonging to users. Today, major Blockchain infrastructure providers Infura and Alchemy, trusted by many Web3 apps and users, have also blocked access to Tornado Cash. GitHub also complied with the ban.

The US Treasury’s decision to sanction Tornado Cash has mobilized many cryptocurrencies, including the most prominent and influential industry leaders and lobby groups. Coin Center, a leading US-based crypto lobbying organization, said in a statement yesterday that “sanctioning a vehicle without the nickname of any deserving person is significantly different from the typical use of the SDN listing.” He later noted that the Treasury’s move was an example of a ‘technology ban’ rather than a sanction against an individual. He also added that the sanctions may violate Article One of the U.S. Constitution.