It was discovered that on April 23, an unknown entity transferred 26 Bitcoins — each worth approximately $40,000 at the time — to a crypto wallet thought to be operated by Jones, according to blockchain data, investigated by the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Hatewatch blog and published on April 29. Prior to the large Bitcoin transfer, Jones’ wallet had an estimated $37,000 in Bitcoin. It was also one of four wallets he used to publicly seek contributions on his Infowars website. When Jones withdrew all cash from the wallet on April 27, according to SPLC Senior Investigative Reporter Michael Edison Hayden, the wallet was swiftly deleted from the donation page of Infowars. A hefty $1,387,673.19 was sitting in the wallet at the time of the transfer.
Not the first crypto donation received by Alex Jones
The individual who sent the 26 Bitcoins to Jones did so as part of a bigger cache of slightly less than 258 tokens of the digital commodity that they have in total from the same account. As per Hatewatch’s investigation of the blockchain, the majority of the 258 Bitcoin had not been touched since 2016, when it was transferred to Jones’s account. The donation which accounted for about 80% of all crypto donations received by the Jones to date, was not the first time the conspiracy theorist has received. According to the SPLC, a different contributor made five Bitcoin deposits into one of Jones’ accounts in 2021, totaling $266,000 at the time, made via six distinct transactions which represents roughly 15% of Jones’ current known Bitcoin holdings. Although no one has yet identified the individual responsible for the donations, they seem to have possessed at least 3,000 Bitcoins at the time of the donation and to have been actively trading in Bitcoin as early as 2011. At the same time that Jones was seeking funding for his Sandy Hook litigation defense, another mysterious megadonor sent around $266,000 in Bitcoin into his account. Hatewatch discovered that the megadonor began splitting their donations to Jones from a stash of 1,000 Bitcoins starting in April 2021.
Jones changes his stance on crypto
In the years leading up to 2021, Jones was a vocal opponent of cryptocurrencies, referring to it as “bad news” in a December 2018 livestream appearance. His strange allegation that he rejected down $5 million in Bitcoin from George Soros was made public in 2019 when he appeared on Joe Rogan’s Joe Rogan Experience show. Jones, according to the SLPC, seems to have shifted his position on cryptocurrency owing mostly to Max Keiser’s influence. By 2022, Jones was promoting non-fungible tokens (NFTs), that were branded with the Infowars brand. “They aren’t a scam, and they’re totally bad-ass and total victory, he said on April 27 during a broadcast.
