Vitalik Buterin Asks Court For Leniency in Upcoming Sentencing of Virgil Griffith

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has added his dependable to the chorus of radical asking a New York tribunal for leniency successful the upcoming sentencing of erstwhile Ethereum developer Virgil Griffith.

Griffith was arrested successful November 2019 aft giving a presumption connected cryptocurrency and blockchain exertion astatine a North Korean crypto league successful April of that year. He was charged with violating U.S. sanctions instrumentality and, successful September 2021, pleaded blameworthy successful an statement with national prosecutors that could spot him service up to 6.5 years successful prison.

In a missive to District Judge Kevin Castel of the Southern District of New York, Buterin elaborate his seven-year relationship with Griffith, who helium met successful 2013 and began collaborating with connected probe successful 2016. In 2018, Griffith formally joined Ethereum arsenic a developer aft Buterin said helium “convinced him to agree.”

Buterin wrote astir Griffith’s benignant and peaceful quality – which besides played heavy successful galore of the astir 40 different letters written to Castel from Buterin’s family, friends, and assemblage members, including a stateless antheral Griffith met astatine a Waffle House portion connected bail successful Alabama successful 2020. The man’s missive to the tribunal credits Griffith with helping him get a G.E.D. and uncovering dependable enactment arsenic a barber.

“Virgil sees the bully successful everyone [except] spiders. They marque him jumpy,” the man, Eugene Hays, wrote to Castel.

That goodness, Buterin wrote, “left a lasting bequest successful the Ethereum Foundation, and the wider community,” arsenic good arsenic connected Buterin himself.

“[Griffith] has besides near immoderate heavy idiosyncratic changes successful myself,” Buterin wrote Castel. “His attitudes and actions implicit the years helped to foster an open-mindedness and an predisposition towards practice that usher my actions to this day, successful a mode that was absent from my property 5 years ago.”

Buterin besides described Griffth’s curiosity astir different cultures, which led him to determination to Singapore successful 2016 and his enactment to marque Ethereum compatible with Islamic concern law.

Though Buterin did not straight link this curiosity to Griffith’s determination to question to North Korea, Griffith’s lawyer wrote that the travel was “the culmination of Virgil’s unsocial and unfortunate curiosity and obsession with North Korea.”

In a missive from Griffith himself to the judge, helium writes: “I became obsessed with seeing the state earlier it fell, akin to idiosyncratic offered the accidental to spot East Berlin successful its last days earlier the Wall came down.”

Griffith’s lawyers, arsenic good arsenic his loved ones, said they anticipation his remorse volition gain him a shorter sentence.

They person asked the tribunal to see serving a two-year condemnation and allowing him to person recognition for clip served successful jailhouse and a play of 3 years’ supervised release, including 270 days of location detention.