Cryptocurrency And Ethereum Programmer Virgil Griffith Sentenced To Prison For Helping North Korea

By Aidan Walker
2965 views
• Published 2 years ago

Published 2 years ago

Virgil Griffith, a former developer of the cryptocurrency Ethereum, was sentenced to five years and three months in a United States prison this week for reportedly helping North Korea learn about blockchain technology.

Prosecutors said a talk that Griffith gave to the North Koreans in 2019 and the assistance he offered them in setting up cryptocurrency wallets may have helped the North Korean nuclear program. Griffith, who confessed during the sentencing hearing that he was "obsessed" with North Korea and regretted his actions, originally asked for a shorter sentence but that request was denied.


Virgil Griffith traveled to North Korea in April 2019 despite the FBI warning him not to go, according to documents from the U.S. Department of Justice. He presented at the Pyongyang Cryptocurrency Conference and answered questions from members of the North Korean government about how to evade U.S. and South Korean sanctions using cryptocurrency.

During his time in North Korea, according to a Coindesk article written by someone else who also attended the cryptocurrency conference, Griffith drank wine out of a bottle with a dead snake in it (a North Korean speciality, apparently) and regaled his hosts with a karaoke version of R.E.M.'s "Losing My Religion." According to court documents, Griffith was also photographed at the conference pointing at a whiteboard with the phrase "No sanctions" and a smiley face written on it.


Griffith, who was prominent in the Ethereum Foundation and was involved in other high-profile projects such as the original Tor browser and WikiSearch, at first defended himself by making reference to his philosophy about cryptocurrency as a decentralized, totally free and transparent kind of finance that should (in principle) be available for everybody.


Some commentators pointed out what they saw as a double standard in the United States governments' prosecution of sanctions violations. A sanction against a foreign entity or individual bars American citizens from doing business with them, but TD Bank and people working there received a fine for North Korea sanction violations, while Virgil Griffith received prison time.


More than a few people on Twitter also noticed that Virgil Griffith's name is, in fact, Virgil Griffith — a fact which, to them, was humorous.


Part of the judge's reasoning for handing down such a harsh sentence is that Griffith's promotion of cryptocurrency as a sanctions evasion tool poses a threat to American foreign policy. Since the U.S. relies on economic sanctions as a tool on the international stage (most recently in the Russia-Ukraine war, for example). Griffith's sharing of knowledge about how to avoid sanctions decreases the effectiveness of that tool.

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