2 years ago
306 The Sothern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) has released an exclusive report explaining how far-right extremists made life-changing fortunes from crypto donations.
In a December 9 Hatewatch report dubbed “How Cryptocurrency Revolutionized the White Supremacist Movements,” the SPLC shared comprehensive findings on how right-wing extremists made “tens of millions of dollars” from crypto donations.
The new report managed to identify and compile data from more than 600 crypto addresses linked to white supremacists and political extremists.
Nonetheless, the SPLC cited struggle while determining its conclusion despite one-quarter of Americans currently owning cryptocurrencies:
“Hatewatch struggled to find any prominent player in the global far-right who hasn’t yet embraced cryptocurrency to at least some degree.”
The new report discovered that many of these individuals used cryptocurrency to hide their transactions, with many of them unbanked.
Stefan Molyneaux, a far-right white nationalist and white supremacist as described by Wikipedia, is a perfect example of a cryptocurrency donation beneficiary.
Molyneaux started accepting donations in Bitcoins more than eight years ago. The report noted that his followers have already donated more than 1250 BTC since 2013.
The white supremacist podcaster has made $3.28 million from an initial $1.28 million in crypto donations. According to the SPLC report, Molyneaux made more than any other extremist.
Greg Johnson, also christened as pseudonym Karl Thorburn, has made over $800,000 from 12 different crypto donations. Johnson, a founder of the controversial website Counter Current, recently requested donations to raise $200,000 funding to further his political ambition.
While commenting about the recent SPLC report, David Gerald, a renowned crypto critic and an author, said that although extremists are alarmingly leaping big from crypto donations, this is not a reason to associate all digital assets with their actions:
“Bitcoin started in right-wing libertarianism…, This is not at all the same as being a neo-Nazi subculture. That said, there’s a greater proportion of Nazis there than you’d expect just by chance, and the Bitcoin subculture really doesn’t bother kicking its Nazis out.”
It is worth noting that the SPLC report relied heavily on past events and incidents repeatedly reported, such as the Daily Stormer publication of 2017.
The recent report associated extremist Andrew “Weev” Auernheimer to a privacy coin Monero that provide private, untraceable transaction better than Bitcoin, when he said in 2017 that:
“I hold a lot of Monero though, that’s my big thing now. I’m way into Monero. I hold a significant amount.”
