Ethereum dev who gave lecture on crypto in North Korea released from prison
On his return to the US, Griffith was alleged to have discussed at the conference how North Korea could use cryptocurrency to evade economic sanctions, violating US sanctions on the hermit kingdom
Former Ethereum developer Virgil Griffith was released from prison on Wednesday after serving almost five years behind bars.
Griffith was sentenced in 2022 to 63 months in prison for assisting North Korea with evading sanctions.
His release from a Michigan low security prison comes on the conditions of parole and work restrictions, according to Brantly Millegan, executive director of the Ethereum Identity Foundation, who first shared the development on X.
In 2018, Griffith was one of a number of crypto experts invited to attend a conference in the North Korean capital of Pyongyang.
On his return to the US, Griffith was alleged to have discussed at the conference how North Korea could use cryptocurrency to evade economic sanctions, violating US sanctions on the hermit kingdom.
Photos from the conference showed Griffith standing in front of a whiteboard with the words, “No sanctions! :)” written on it.
North Korean hackers, commonly referred to as the Lazarus Group, have in recent years seized on crypto as a way to steal funds.
Between 2007 and 2023, the group’s hacks have cost crypto firms and DeFi projects over $3.4 billion, per a DL News calculation.
In February, North Korean hackers swiped $1.4 billion from crypto exchange Bybit, the largest heist in financial history.
Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin maintained Griffth had done nothing wrong by speaking at the conference.
“He delivered a presentation based on publicly available info about open-source software,” Buterin said in an X post at the time. “There was no weird hackery [or] ‘advanced tutoring.‘”
Buterin signed a petition for Griffith’s early release in 2023.
