Ethereum’s Real Use Case Finally Discovered: Helping North Korea
This article is satire and for entertainment purposes only.
In a not-so-surprising twist, Ethereum’s narrative has changed once again. Once described as the world computer, the world’s largest ponzi platform has modified its mission statement after its last pivot to a way to raise money from unintelligent retail investors for illegal securities fraud failed. In an attempt to keep the price artificially inflated and give old bagholders one last chance to finally dump their positions before the project crashes and burns, Ethereum has finally settled on its newest and most hopeful use case yet: helping North Korea avoid sanctions from the United States.
The man responsible for what may unironically be the dumbest pivot of all time is none other than Virgil Griffith, hero and poster-child employee of the Ethereum Foundation. The known nerd and “hacktivist” was recently sentenced to twenty years in prison after teaching North Korea how to use “Blockchain Technology” to launder money across global borders with Crypto. This is hot off the news of Kim Jong-un’s failed shitcoin launch for NUCLR (Nuclear Coin), a coin backed by oppression, uranium, and faith in their Dear Leader.
Determined to find out how a single individual such as Virgil Griffith could not only be so boneheaded as to be a US citizen and help North Korea launder money, but more importantly, ruin Ethereum’s only viable pivot, our reporters got to work uncovering what may be the dumbest case we’ve ever come across.
Our reporters discovered that the story all began during a cast reunion at the AVN awards in Las Vegas, NV for Virgil Griffith’s cringe TBS show “King of the Nerds.” The venue was set to be held at the adult convention as most of his former cast had to “pivot” into other types of work following the show. Griffith was introduced to Dennis Rodman at the Spankchain sponsored cast afterparty (Rodman is randomly known to show up uninvited to events) and the unlikely pair quickly hit it off. This was all taking place during the peak ICO craze of 2017 and Rodman — fresh off his stint promoting Potcoin on the global stage during the North Korea Trump negotiations — was determined to bring “peace” to the destitute country and was looking for nerds dumb enough to put their lives on the line for “the greater good.” Griffith volunteered immediately and found the only person arrogant enough to go to North Korea with him, Vlad Zamfir. They signed up to speak at the “Blockchains and Peace” conference in North Korea to teach their citizens about the gospel of Ethereum. Our reporters were wondering why Mr. Zamfir was not arrested alongside Griffith and discovered its because his incoherent rambling was so hard to understand that the FBI actually gave a him a medal instead for confusing the enemy with scaling bullshit and setting their people back ten years.
Griffith was warned by everyone not to go to North Korea and be so overt about pitching Ethereum’s first and only real use case. Everyone from Vitalik Buterin, his friends on Facebook, followers on Twitter, his parents, to even Stevie Wonder himself claimed he was retarded saying, “Even my blind ass can see that’s a dumb idea.” Our reporters have learned that even libertarian hero Ross Ulbricht wrote him a letter on his best toilet paper to call him dumb for going. None of this would deter the brave and foolish Griffith from attempting to “liberate” the North Korean people by teaching their benevolent leader how to launder money.
The Ethereum Foundation reluctantly accepted this daring pivot into helping oppressive regimes. They rationalized that as long as Virgil didn’t get caught everything would be fine. Of course, as attention-loving nerds often do, Griffith posted about his federal crime on Facebook, Twitter, Craigslist, and random billboards overlooking the highway. He even went so far as to alert the FBI themselves as to what he was doing because they seemed so “supportive” of his good-decision making and wanted to learn everything they could to help. When our reporters reached out to head of HR for the Ethereum Foundation for comment on Griffith, we were quickly dismissed “We don’t know any Virgil. You guys ask too many questions. Just focus on our unicorns and colorful marketing while we throw him under the bus.”
After digging deeper we learned that Mr. Griffith was a member of the Ethereum Special Projects Team which is a secret division of the Ethereum Foundation deliberately focused on helping murderous regimes avoid US sanctions. It was referred to internally within the foundation as “The third pivot” and they were hoping to keep it under wraps before this whole scandal broke.
“The Special Projects Team, or Special Ed as we call it, is where we keep our most autistic of soldiers,” said Joe Lubin, head of Consensys, Ethereum’s corporate pump machine. “Unfortunately, Virgil is a bright boy who was educated beyond his naive intelligence. Now if you’ll excuse me I’m late for my flight, I’m on my way to Dubai to raise money for Consensys. ICOs haven’t been banned there yet.”
In an attempt to get to the bottom of this fiasco, we sent our veteran reporter Pepe Grenouille undercover to North Korea to speak with Kim Jong-un about his experiences with Mr. Griffith. We smuggled him into the country on a cargo plane between boxes of VHS tapes of Space Jam and various 1990s memorabilia they were planning to sell to their citizens as new culture. We were only permitted to speak with Dear Leader after we let him beat us in a game of 1-on-1 basketball while he wore the 1997 Chicago Bulls jersey in size XXXL. Unfortunately for us, Pepe accidentally scored one basket and won and so we had to escape the country immediately before he was executed.
After reaching out to Virgil Griffith’s lawyer we learned that Griffith will be unable to post bail as he’s “all-in” on Crypto and the United States Government won’t accept Ethereum. They mentioned they could possibly be talked into accepting Bitcoin but by the time the confirmations go through Virgil would have already done his time. Our reporters learned that he is being held in Los Angeles at the Metropolitan Detention Center, where he is in a holding cell with other inmates from LA. We now know that Mr. Griffith is currently being faced with a challenge far greater than figuring out how to scale Ethereum: diversity.
Before Griffith’s arrest, our reporters discovered that he was working on a company called Etherisc that helped people create “Parametric Insurance” on the blockchain, which is a smart contract that triggers a near-immediate payout of Ether upon certain events. Our reporters wonder if he has set up a smart contract that triggers upon the first time he drops the soap in prison. We hope for his sake he has.
We here at Coin Jazeera wish this dumb and brilliant man the best and hope by the time he gets out Ethereum has figured out how to scale.
UPDATE 12/1/2019: Our reporters have just received word that Virgil Griffith is being sued by Binance CEO, CZ in civil court for “bringing great shame and FUD to Cryptocurrency.” This is the first major lawsuit following the establishment of CZ and Justin Sun’s brand new $10M “Kick ’em while they’re down fund” meant to bully anyone who negatively impacts the price of Crypto intentionally or accidentally.
This article is satire and for entertainment purposes only.