Roger Ver is one of the most well known crypto figured for a variety of reasons, aside from being associated with the bitcoin cash fork, BCH, and the owner of the domain bitcoin.com. Being a born entrepreneur and crypto enthusiast since the earliest days, we like to take a moment to thank people like Roger who have helped bring cryptocucurrency mainstream. If it weren’t for people just like Roger, it is difficult to say that we would be where we are today. In fact, the earliest proponents of cryptocurrency were people that were castouts from society, and called crazy for believing in “magic internet money” when almost no others believed. 🤷
Having been born in San Jose, California, Ver was born an American citizen although this has subsequently changed as he resides in Japan. Ver attended De Anza College before dropping out to pursue other business interested. Shortly after, in a controversial court ruling in 2002, Ver pleaded guilty to selling explosives without a license on the internet, and for mailing these explosives. This was a low point for Ver, and he subsequently served 10 months in federal prison for the crime. Before this time, and until 2012 Roger served as the CEO of Memorydealers.com and had short stints in politics attempting to enter the California State Assembly as a Libertarian, although unsuccessful.
Fast forward to 2011 when Ver started investing personally in bitcoin using Charlie Schrem’s Bitinstant. This early investment allowed Bitinstant to hire a designer and another programmer, although it was still unable to prevent the company from closing its doors not much long after. Later, Roger invested over $1 million USD into early vendures with Ripple, blockchain.info, Bitpay, and Kraken, the exchange. These early investments allowed Ver to profit massively and also lay the ground work for the development of high functioning platforms within the industry. Aside from thse business ventures Ver is also credited with facilitating various crypto meetups with early figures in the Sunnyvale, CA area and boosting interest. It was Ver’s early enthusiasm and unbridled drive that helped earn him the moniker of “Bitcoin Jesus” Additionally, Ver helped with the establishment of the bitcoin foundation with a large donation, and he has since made other significant donations to other charities which hold similar views to his. 🤓
Aside from his business aspirations within the industry, Ver has specific opinions about the continued development of the bitcoin network. More notably, and part of what drives Ver’s opinions for forking bitcoin is his desire to create a larger block size. As a result, Ver supports the development of Bitcoin XT. Roger continues to remain an active and vocal member of the crypto community, getting in confrontations with the likes of Craig Wright and Tone Vays. If you recall, Craig Wright and Roger Ver were early proponents of forking Bitcoin initially, although Ver has since had regrets with a storm of disagreements upon which the deal was handled. Ver has since called Wright a “fraud and a liar” for which Wright is suing.
More recently Ver and Tone Vays had a public confrontation where Ver challenged Vays to send him $5 worth of bitcoin in less than 24 hours, for less than 5 cents for the transaction (Ver is a BCH proponent, and Vays is a BTC maximalist). The two made a $10,000 bet and Vays seemed to prove that the transaction could be made, and published proof of the transaction. However, Ver has recently published a video in which he accused Vays of cheating and that the transaction did not happen within the allotted time frame. 🤪
Regardless of his controversy, or always sharing the same vision as the earliest proponents of bitcoin, we applaud Roger on the hard work he has done. We also appreciate the whole generation of new people coming into the industry. If not for his early investments, many platforms likely would not exist today if not for Roger. We look forward to welcoming in new waves of crypto enthusiasts and helping them understand the new technology, and the implications of using decentralized money into the future. The future is as bright as ever!
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