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Ethereum researcher Virgil Griffith files motion to dismiss North Korea conspiracy charge

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Virgil Griffith, the former Ethereum Foundation researcher accused of conspiring to violate U.S. sanctions against the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, filed a motion on Thursday to dismiss the charge against him on the grounds that prosecutors from the Southern District of New York have failed to properly state Griffith’s crime. 

Griffith, 37, was arrested by FBI agents on Nov. 28th, 2019 following a presentation at a conference in North Korea in April. 

Prosecutors allege that at the conference Griffith rendered services to the North Korean government in the form of “valuable information” he provided to DPRK officials, and that he “participated in conversations” about how to use blockchain technology to avoid sanctions. 

Griffith, meanwhile, contends that his presentation was a “highly general speech based on publicly available information.”

Thursday’s motion to dismiss the charge now hinges on whether or not planning and giving this presentation can be interpreted as a conspiracy to violate sanctions. 

In the motion, Griffith argues that because he was not paid for his attendance and was not under contract as a consultant, he was not providing a “service” to the DPRK, and that his speech is protected from U.S. government prohibition under the First Amendment. 

Additionally, Griffith argues that his presentation explicitly falls under an exemption in the International Emergency Economic Powers Act for the sharing of “information” and “information materials.” 

The motion added: 

“If the speech Mr. Griffith purportedly gave is not ‘information,’ then nothing is.” 

As Cointelegraph has previously reported, Griffith’s case has divided the crypto community. 

In December, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin defended Griffith, saying:

“I don’t think what Virgil did gave DPRK any kind of real help in doing anything bad. He delivered a presentation based on publicly available info about open-source software. There was no weird hackery ‘advanced tutoring.’ […] Virgil made no personal gain from the trip. […] I hope U.S.A. […] focuses on genuine and harmful corruption that it and all countries struggle with rather than going after programmers delivering speeches.”



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Ethereum

Crypto enthusiasts could make $122K per year mining Ethereum with this setup

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Simon Byrne has taken at-home crypto mining to a whole new level as he looks to capitalize on Ethereum’s (ETH) enormous price potential. 

As first reported by Anthony Garreffa, Byrne has set up an ETH mining rig consisting of 78 GeForce RTX 3080 graphics cards. Although the RTX 3080 is marketed toward high-end PC gamers, crypto miners are using these powerful specs to enhance their capabilities.

With each card using roughly 300W of power, Byrne’s setup uses 23.4KW of energy. And that doesn’t even factor in associated costs like AC. All said, his electricity bill is estimated to run up to around $2,166 per month.

The RTX 3080 launched in September at a price of $699, but supply shortages have caused the per-unit cost to swell to $1,199. At the shortage price, that’s a price tag of $93,522 for Byrne’s setup.

Still, these costs could be offset by the operation’s mining capability. One GeForce RTX 3080 graphic card has a hash rate of around 83MH/s using Ethash, which should generate roughly 0.22236870 ETH per month, according to Garreffa. All 78 cards would therefore generate 17.3 ETH per month, which is equivalent to around $12,352 at today’s prices.

Stripping away the electricity costs, that’s roughly $10,200 per month or $122,000 per year. And that’s not factoring in Ethereum’s price potential during the next bull market.

Ether’s price zipped past $700 over the weekend, the first such move since mid-2018. The return of altseason, as some have predicted, could send ETH’s price even higher over the medium term as investors cycle from Bitcoin to other large-cap cryptocurrencies.