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Vitalik Buterin Donated $1M in Ether to Coin Center Hours After Tornado Cash Victory

Published

6 месяцев ago

27 ноября, 2024

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin donated 320 ether — worth over $1 million — to crypto think tank Coin Center on Tuesday night, according to blockchain data.

Buterin’s donation came mere hours after a U.S. appeals court overturned U.S. sanctions against embattled crypto mixing service Tornado Cash, ruling that Tornado Cash’s smart contracts “are not the property of a foreign national or entity” and thus cannot be blocked under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA). By imposing sanctions on Tornado Cash, the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Asset Control (OFAC) “overstepped its congressionally defined authority,” the court ruled.

Coin Center has been a key player in the crypto industry’s fight against the U.S. government’s sanctions against Tornado Cash. OFAC sanctioned Tornado Cash in August 2022, claiming it helped to launder more than $7 billion in cryptocurrency, including hundreds of millions of dollars stolen by North Korea’s notorious hacking group, the Lazarus Group.

In October 2022, Coin Center filed suit against Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, the Treasury Department, OFAC and OFAC’s then-Director Andrea Gacki accusing them of overstepping their authority and violating the First Amendment in sanctioning Tornado Cash. When a district court judge dismissed the case a year later, Coin Center appealed his ruling with a higher court, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit. That case is still ongoing.

In addition to fighting sanctions against Tornado Cash, Coin Center has been involved in the defense of Tornado Cash’s developers, filing an amicus brief in support of developer Roman Storm’s motion to dismiss the government’s case against him.

Though Buterin hasn’t been as directly involved in the Tornado Cash cases as Coin Center, he has made his support — for both the mixing service itself as well as its embattled developers — clear. Shortly after OFAC first sanctioned Tornado Cash, Buterin publicly stated that he’d used the service to donate money to Ukraine. Earlier this year, he donated 30 ETH, worth over $100,000, to the legal defense fund for Storm and fellow developer Roman Semenov.

Buterin did not respond to CoinDesk’s request for comment.

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Justin Sun Emerges as Donald Trump Memecoin’s Top Holder With $21.9M Stake

Published

49 минут ago

21 мая, 2025

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Tron founder Justin Sun said he’s the top holder of the TRUMP memecoin, entitling him to attend a private dinner and a VIP reception with U.S. President Donald Trump this week.

A Solana address apparently associated with Sun holds roughly $21.9 million worth of the TRUMP coin, placing him at the top of the leaderboard in a sweepstakes that rewards the biggest token holders with access to Trump at a golf club near Washington, D.C. The leaderboard appears on a website publicized by Trump on his X account.

Sun is also a backer of World Liberty Financial, the decentralized finance project backed by the Trump family, having invested invested $75 million. The project’s co-founder, Zak Folkman, has credited the Chinese-born crypto billionaire for its success.

The TRUMP token debuted just days before the president’s inauguration in January and was met with criticism from across the crypto industry and elsewhere. Critics pointed to its timing of the launch and its structure, which allocates a large portion of the supply to Trump-affiliated insiders.

Democratic lawmakers, including Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Sen. Richard Blumenthal, have argued that Trump’s crypto effort is eroding ethical norms. They’ve introduced bills to block public officials from launching or endorsing digital assets.

The White House responded to the scrutiny by downplaying it, rejecting allegations of conflicts of interest and framing the criticism as partisan disruption.

Trump’s memecoin, it’s worth noting, saw a major price rise over the event’s announcement. The dinner falls on Bitcoin Pizza Day, which commemorates one of the earliest bitcoin BTC transactions.

TRUMP is trading at $14.40, up 8.3% in the last 24 hours.

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Crypto.com Buys Allnew Investments to Secure MiFID License to Offer Derivatives in Europe

Published

57 минут ago

21 мая, 2025

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Crypto exchange Crypto.com said it bought AN Allnew Investments to gain a license allowing it to offer derivatives across the European Economic Area (EEA).

The Markets in Financial Instruments Directive (MiFID) license was issued to Allnew by the Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission (CySEC), the exchange said in a website posting. It grants the exchange the right to offer a range of financial products in the 27 nations of the European Union alongside Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway.

This acquisition bolsters Crypto.com’s presence in Europe. The exchange secured a Markets in Crypto Assets (MiCA) license in January so it could offer crypto custody and exchange services across the EEA. The company declined to say how much it paid for Allnews.

Crypto exchanges have been moving into derivatives to unlock new sources of profit. The company joins rivals including Gemini and Kraken in gaining MiFID licenses to offer derivatives in Europe. Kraken’s license was also obtained through acquisition of the holder. Earlier this month, Coinbase spent $2.9 billion to buy options platform Deribit to strengthen its position in the U.S. derivatives market.