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Virgil Griffith
- Virgil Griffith, an Ethereum Foundation researcher, has pleaded guilty to helping North Korea bypass US sanctions.
- US authorities have alleged that he helped North Koreans deploy blockchain technology to allow the country to circumvent sanctions.
- “I don’t think what Virgil did really helped DRPK do anything wrong,” Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin said in 2019.
- See more stories on the Insider business page.
Virgil Griffith, an Ethereum Foundation researcher, has pleaded guilty to helping North Korea bypass US sanctions by using blockchain technology, according to a Bloomberg report.
Griffith was arrested in 2019 after attending a blockchain conference in Pyongyang. US authorities have alleged that he helped North Koreans deploy blockchain technology to allow the country to bypass strict international sanctions. Prosecutors said his presentation was tantamount to doing North Korea a favor and his trip was not approved by America, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Griffith’s attorneys countered that he gave simple information readily available online.
The trial was scheduled to start on Monday, but Griffith instead admitted to conspiring to violate sanctions law, according to Bloomberg. He faces up to 20 years in prison.
After his arrest in 2019, Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin circulated a petition on twitter calling for Griffith’s release, although he said the Ethereum Foundation was not involved in the trip to Pyongyang.
“I don’t think what Virgil did really helped DRPK do anything wrong,” Buterin wrote. “There was no weird hacker ‘advanced tutoring’.”
“Geopolitical openness is a virtue. It is admirable to go to a group of people who have been taught from childhood to believe that they are the most evil enemy, and to hear what they have to say, “he added.
North Korea is subject to so-called secondary sanctions, which means anyone doing business with the country can come under fire.
During the pre-crypto era, Griffith made a name for himself as an iconoclastic hacker who reveled in creating “minor disasters in public relations for businesses and organizations that I don’t like” , as he said in a 2008 interview with the New York Times.
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