Programmer arrested by U.S. authorities after North Korea cryptocurrency talk

Programmer Virgil Griffith, known for his project WikiScanner as well as his recent work for the Ethereum Foundation, has been arrested for "assisting North Korea in evading sanctions," the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York announced Friday.

Griffith was arrested at the Los Angeles International Airport on Thursday, the announcement said. He gave a blockchain-related lecture at a conference in North Korea, called the Pyongyang Blockchain and Cryptocurrency Conference, "in or about" April 2019.

According to the criminal complaint against Griffith, the U.S. Department of State had denied him permission to travel to North Korea. With his decision to travel without permission and present at the conference, he violated U.S. sanctions against the country.

“Despite receiving warnings not to go, Griffith allegedly traveled to one of the United States’ foremost adversaries, North Korea, where he taught his audience how to use blockchain technology to evade sanctions," Assistant Attorney General John Demers said in a statement.

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Griffith, a U.S. national residing in Singapore, is charged with conspiring to violate the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), which carries a maximum 20 years prison term.

Griffith's arrest sparked a big debate in cryptocurrency circles, both based on the content of his presentation in North Korea and the fact that he recently worked for the Ethereum Foundation, which governs the second most popular cryptocurrency, Ethereum. He made headlines in July 2019 for his efforts to make Ethereum compliant with the Sharia law.

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Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin joined the discussion on Sunday, saying that he refuses to "throw Virgil under the bus," and that he hopes the "USA shows strength rather than weakness and focuses on genuine and harmful corruption that it and all countries struggle with rather than going after programmers delivering speeches parroting public information."

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Buterin also pointed out that Griffith's trip was a personal endeavor that had nothing to do with the Ethereum Foundation.

Disclosure: The author of this text owns, or has recently owned, a number of cryptocurrencies, including BTC and ETH.