16 Facts About Virgil Griffith

Virgil Griffith was born on 1983 and is an American programmer.

Virgil Griffith worked extensively on the Ethereum cryptocurrency platform, designed the Tor2web proxy along with Aaron Swartz, and created the Wikipedia indexing tool WikiScanner.

Virgil Griffith has published papers on artificial life and integrated information theory.

Virgil Griffith was born in Birmingham, Alabama and grew up in nearby Tuscaloosa.

Virgil Griffith graduated from the Alabama School of Math and Science in 2002, and then attended the University of Alabama, studying cognitive science.

Virgil Griffith has been a research scientist at the Ethereum Foundation since 2016.

At the time of his arrest in 2019, Virgil Griffith was a resident of Singapore and was allegedly investigating the possibility of renouncing his US citizenship.

Virgil Griffith has given talks at the hacker conferences Interz0ne, PhreakNIC, and HOPE.

In 2008, together with Aaron Swartz, Virgil Griffith designed the Tor2web proxy.

On Ethereum, Virgil Griffith writes Ethereum "is an unprecedented arena for playing cooperative games", and "enables powerful economic vehicles we don't yet understand", by bringing cooperative game theory into new domains.

In mid 2018, Virgil Griffith was one of a number of international cryptocurrency experts invited to attend a conference in Pyongyang, North Korea.

Virgil Griffith agreed to participate, despite being denied application for special validation he required to attend by the US State Department, and the resulting need for him to take an unusual route to enter the country.

On his return to the US, Virgil Griffith was alleged to have discussed at the conference means through which North Korea could use cryptocurrency to evade economic sanctions and, on November 28,2019, he was arrested by the Federal Bureau of Investigation for providing "highly technical information to North Korea, knowing that this information could be used to help North Korea launder money and evade sanctions".

Subsequently, Virgil Griffith was imposed with a 10-year export privilege ban by The United States Department of Commerce.

On September 28,2021, Virgil Griffith pleaded guilty at a hearing in which he expressed remorse.

Virgil Griffith was sentenced on April 12,2022, to 63 months in prison, with 10 months already considered time served from his pre-trial detention.