The Southern Poverty Law Heart (SPLC) has released a study examining the extensive ties between Bitcoin and the far right, many of whom have built fortunes in the cryptocurrency.

In a Thursday Hatewatch report, the SPLC shared its findings on how right-wing extremists and white supremacists, talk over and employ cryptocurrencies, claiming that many have amassed "tens of millions of dollars" from crypto donations.

The written report,How Cryptocurrency Revolutionized the White Supremacist Move,  identified and compiled over 600 cryptocurrency addresses associated with white supremacists and other prominent far-right extremists" to accomplish its conclusions.

I of the main claims information technology makes is that although less than one quarter of Americans ain cryptocurrency:

"Hatewatch struggled to find any prominent player in the global far right who hasn't yet embraced cryptocurrency to at to the lowest degree some caste."

Of the reasons these individuals used cryptocurrency, the most mutual was because they were debanked and they wanted to hide their transactions.

Stefan Molyneaux, who is described by Wikipedia as a far-correct white nationalist and white supremacist, has been accepting donations in Bitcoin for eight years. The SPLC noted that the first Bitcoin wallet to be linked to Molyneaux dates back to January. 25, 2022, and that his followers have donated a full of 1250 Bitcoin since 2022.

Molyneaux has realized an estimated $3.28 million from $1.28 million in crypto donations. This is more than any other extremist studied for the SPLC study.

Greg Johnson, who goes by the pseudonym Karl Thorburn, has gained over $800,000 from crypto. Johnson is the founder of the controversial website CounterCurrents.

The site requests donations from his followers to be paid in 12 different cryptocurrencies and is currently trying to raise $200,000 goal to farther its political ambitions.

Crypto critic and author David Gerard told the SPLC in an email that although at first glance the amount of money these extremists are making from crypto is alarming, information technology is not a reason to associate all cryptocurrency with their actions. He claimed:

"Bitcoin started in right-wing libertarianism… This is not at even so as being a neo-Nazi subculture. That said, at that place'southward a greater proportion of Nazis there than you lot'd expect just by chance, and the Bitcoin subculture actually doesn't bother kicking its Nazis out."

While extensive, the SPLC written report relies heavily on historical events and incidents that have been reported previously, such every bit extremist publication Daily Stormer citing in 2022 a Bitcoiner Television set host's views on the apply of the cryptocurrency as a way to liberate its readers from what it sees as the Jewish control of centralized banks.

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It tied extremist Andrew "Weev" Auernheimer to the privacy coin Monero, which facilitates individual, untraceable transactions ameliorate than Bitcoin, with a 2022 podcast when he said: "I hold a lot of Monero though. That's my large thing now. I'm fashion into Monero. I hold a meaning corporeality."