Roger Ver: The Bitcoin Evangelist with a bad temper
Roger Ver has been in the crypto industry for over 10 years, promoting the Bitcoin Cash project and co-founding Bitcoin.com and Blockchain.com. In addition, he has a special talent for making enemies everywhere.
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Roger Ver was born in the city that is considered the heart of Silicon Valley – San Jose. Therefore, from early childhood, he watched how ambitious and smart people made their fortunes on innovative projects and the development of computer programs.
At the age of 19, he decided that studies were wasting his life, he said “Good bye!” college and opened a company selling PC components. The business was doing great, its target audience was within walking distance from the office of “MemoryDealers.com” (that was the name of Ver's first company) and already at the age of 24, Roger reported his first million to the tax office.
But he was bored with just selling a hot commodity, so he decided to go into politics. Fortunately for the crypto world, his candidacy for the California State Assembly did not pass. Remaining a libertarian at heart, he gave up trying to drag himself into the rigid confines of party discipline.
Fighting boredom, he managed to earn his second and third million, served 10 months in federal prison for selling explosives through eBay, and, disillusioned with the US legal system, went to live in Japan.
His resentment is understandable: spending 10 months in a cell for selling New Year's fireworks without a license is cruel.
He never returned to his homeland, bought himself the Saint Kitts and Nevis’ citizenship, and then completely threw his American passport away.
Like Max Kaiser, Roger Ver positions himself as an anarchist, an individualist, but with a bias towards libertarianism. So it's no surprise that he lit up like those ill-fated fireworks when he found out about Satoshi Nakamoto's “White Paper” in 2010. For him, digital money has become the epitome of the struggle for personal economic freedom.
From the very first days of the crypto world immersion, he unconditionally accepted bitcoin as a manifesto of individualism, and blockchain as a voluntary association of free individuals. He rushed into the work of distributing cryptocurrencies and actively campaigning. The exaltation and intensity with which he did it was associated in the community with an almost religious ecstasy.
That is how he got his nickname – “Bitcoin Jesus”.
Roger Ver did not miss a single significant event related to cryptocurrencies and showed up at almost all conferences, seminars and TV shows where cryptocurrencies were discussed.
The first steps and the road to Bitcoin Cash
1. In 2011, Roger's company “Ver's Memorydealers” was the first in the world to accept bitcoin as payment.
2. In November 2012, he created an online store bitcoinstore.com with a hundred thousand items available for purchase for BTC.
3. In 2013, he launched Blockchain.com, one of the most popular wallets for BTC and ETH.
4. His first investment was in Charlie Shrem's Bitinstant crypto exchange. However, when in 2014 Shrem was accused of ties to Silk Road and arrested, Roger said that there was nothing connecting him and Bitinstant. And now he does not mention this fact in his biography.
5. In April 2014, Ver became the CEO of Bitcoin.com and took ownership of a unique domain name.
6. From 2012 to 2014, he invested about a million more dollars of personal funds in new cryptocurrency-related startups, including Ripple, Blockchain.info, Bitpay and Kraken.
7. In June 2016, Roger Ver was appointed Chairman of the Cryptocurrency Advisory Board at MGT Capital Investments. At the time it was headed by John McAfee.
And few people know, but it was Roger Ver who convinced the budding developer of software applications for financial markets Changpeng Zhao to quit his job at a prestigious company and start writing code for his own crypto exchange. Everybody knows the outcome of that story …
How Bitcoin Cash Changed the Evangelist
Bitcoin Cash appeared in 2017 after the scaling debate that took place in the crypto community. The BTC blockchain was going through hard times: the blocks were overloaded, the transaction speed slowed down, and the commission increased almost tenfold. Roger Ver and Bitmain co-founder Jihan Wu supported (financially, among other things) the need for the fork.
Roger spared neither effort nor time to promote BCH. But this time he used his influence and eloquence to badmouth the “competitor” – BTC. The fact is that 2017 became a dividing line between the two bitcoin protocols. And many key players then publicly took one of the two sides. By that time Ver has already abandoned his beliefs in the future of the “classic” BTC and began to passionately argue that it had no prospects.
Bitcoin Cash is the real Bitcoin and will have a larger market cap, trading volume and user base in the future. The rest of the bitcoins are doomed.
This is perhaps the most correct statement regarding BTC used by Ver after 2017. The former bitcoin evangelist spoke with such passion about how “stupid money is pouring into BTC” and that “if the party sucks, it’s time to leave,” even his associates were surprised.
And the community got the idea that “The Real Roger’s Gospel is green and has Benjamin Franklin on the cover.”
Best quotes by Roger Ver
Bitcoin is one of the most important inventions in the history of mankind.
For the first time, anyone can send or receive any amount of money from anyone, anywhere in the world and without restrictions. This is the dawn of a better, free world.
I was able to explain BTC to about two dozen high school students. All the kids were fascinated by bitcoins and caught my every word. Yes, I'm kind of an evangelist
Bitcoin will go through many more bubbles on its way to improving the lives of all people on the planet. I'm not worried about short-term fluctuations in its price.
I bought my first BTC for 92 cents. What more could I wish for?
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