Julian Assange will be freed after pleading guilty, ending 14 years of legal fight

Assange's arrest in the UK stemmed from breaching bail conditions while seeking asylum to avoid extradition on charges related to the publication of classified documents provided by Chelsea Manning. Manning's own sentence was commuted in 2013 by then-President Obama.

The historical development of WikiLeaks and cryptocurrencies, in particular bitcoin, has been closely intertwined over the years. A decade ago in a technology/comments/2ghp54/i_am_julian_assange_ama_about_my_new_book_when/” target=”_blank” rel=”noopener nofollow noreferrer”>Reddit AMAAssange said he wrote about bitcoin in his book. While WikiLeaks initially refrained from accepting bitcoin, the organization later adopted it for donations as it faced a financial block by state authorities after the Cablegate leaks in 2011.

Assange claimed that the initial reluctance was due to a “personal request” from Satoshi Nakamoto, according to a report. report from CoinDesk. This move not only kept WikiLeaks afloat but also significantly boosted the profile and utility of bitcoin.

“There is a lot about bitcoin in my book, about my thoughts on it and about WikiLeaks' history with it. Eric Schmidt (from Google) and I talked for a while about it, and I also included a lot of notes to expand on my points of view. “It is a fascinating and complex topic, so I cannot address it all,” Assange said at the time.

During his legal battles, Assange's supporters used a Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO) to raise funds for his defense, raising over 16,500 ether (eth), currently valued at over $55.2 million, making AssangeDAO in the best funded DAO in recent history.

On January 10, 2017, reports emerged of Assange's death. In response, she read a live hash on Twitch of the most recent block produced that day.

“Thinking about real-time proof of life, intellectually the most interesting one is to take the most recent block on the bitcoin blockchain,” Assange said.

Even during Assange's imprisonment, crypto donations continued to flow into WikiLeaks wallets. Since his arrest in 2019, more than 35 btc (worth approximately $1.13 million at the time) have been deposited to the WikiLeaks donation address.

Assange's brother, Gabriel Shipton, recently addressed claims by blockchain security firms SlowMist and RescuETH that AssangeDAO may be “soft.” Shipton claimed that these claims were “simply false” and explained that the funds raised by AssangeDAO were used to purchase an nft and the proceeds were donated to the German charity Wau Holland Foundation for Assange's legal defense. Despite Shipton's assurances, some AssangeDAO members remain dissatisfied, citing concerns over the lack of a proper token-based voting system and allocation of funds.