The Bitcoin Jesus of the past is now awaiting trial

Recently, the biggest regulatory event in the crypto space is that Binance founder CZ was sentenced to four months in prison. On the day when CZ's trial results were announced, another person who had a huge impact on the crypto industry appeared in the topic of "crypto regulation". Compared with his former influence, the news of his arrest was rarely discussed.

A week ago, the U.S. Department of Justice released a document accusing 45-year-old American-born Roger Keith Ver of evading nearly $50 million in taxes, suspected of mail fraud, tax evasion and filing false tax returns. Since Roger Ver was arrested in Spain at the end of April, the United States is seeking to extradite him to the United States for trial.

Roger Ver's name may be unfamiliar to the current crypto community. In fact, in the short history of Bitcoin development over the past two decades, Roger Ver has played a significant role. He was once called "Bitcoin Jesus."

The suspicion of large-scale tax evasion accused by the U.S. Department of Justice this time stems from the fact that Roger Ver concealed the number of Bitcoins he held when he withdrew from U.S. citizenship in 2014. At that time, the price of Bitcoin was only more than 800 US dollars, and then it fell to around 300 US dollars. Roger held 131,000 Bitcoins at the time, which is undoubtedly a huge asset today. Roger sold 70,000 Bitcoins three years after leaving the United States. The notice issued by the U.S. Department of Justice wrote, "Roger Ver caused a total loss of at least 48 million US dollars to the IRS."

"Bitcoin Jesus" with hundreds of thousands of BTC

Born in Silicon Valley, USA in 1979, Roger Ver is a famous libertarian and anarchist. After attending a community college in the United States for one year, he dropped out to start a business and founded his own company, Memorydealers, an online sales company for electronic parts and equipment. Later, at the age of 21, he participated in the election of the California State Assembly as a candidate of the Libertarian Party. As a result, he was reported for "selling an explosive product on eBay without a license" and was sentenced to 10 months in prison by the California Federal Court for the illegal sale of explosives.

In 2011, Roger discovered Bitcoin and became a loyal believer in Bitcoin. Roger first integrated Bitcoin payments into his company's website, allowing customers to pay with Bitcoin on the website. At that time, each Bitcoin was worth less than $1. It is estimated that Roger collected more than 400,000 Bitcoins through such attempts.

In the past decade, the price of Bitcoin has experienced many "roller coaster" fluctuations. Roger Ver, who was able to find and hold tens of thousands of Bitcoins from the $1 position, now seems to be full of wealth, but this is not the reason why Roger is called "Bitcoin Jesus". As a loyal believer in Bitcoin, Roger spent more than $100,000 to broadcast Bitcoin advertisements on radio stations across the United States in the early days of Bitcoin.

In 2012, Roger Ver and other founders founded the Bitcoin Foundation (bitcoinfoundation.org), dedicated to promoting Bitcoin worldwide. In addition to collecting Bitcoin, Roger Ver also took the initiative to find and fund startups dedicated to promoting Bitcoin. He can be regarded as the "angel investor" of the first batch of Bitcoin startups (he calls himself the "second participant" of these projects). In the early days of Blockchain.com, Roger Ver found the founder of Blockchain.com who had just graduated from high school and provided him with funds so that he could buy a dedicated server to operate the project instead of relying on the Mac mini at home.

In addition to Blockchain.com, Roger Ver has also invested in many crypto projects including Kraken, purse.io, Bitpay and Ripple. Just after Roger Ver was arrested, Ripple CTO David Schwartz made a comment, recalling that "Ver is one of the best and most sincere people I have ever met, and his actions stem from his firm belief in his own moral principles."

In 2014, Roger Ver bought control of the Bitcoin.com domain name and leased it to Blockchain.info, and later to OKCoin. In 2015, Roger's Bitcoin rose from $1 to more than $200, and he was still persuading others to buy Bitcoin, "It's not too late to buy Bitcoin now, just like some people later thought it was too late to enter the Internet..."

Halo gone, "owes" $47 million

In the history of crypto development, Roger Ver is not a completely positive figure. After gaining the halo of "Bitcoin Jesus" for his early support for Bitcoin, Roger Ver's activities in recent years have mostly caused controversy rather than admiration.

In 2017, at the crossroads of Bitcoin hard fork, Roger Ver chose BCH, which was advocated by Bitmain founder Jihan Wu. His mining pool Bitcoin.com also played a pivotal role in helping Jihan Wu win the computing power war after the BCH fork. Since then, Roger Ver has become a staunch evangelist for BCH, repeatedly expressing that "BCH is the real Bitcoin." Because BCH did not have the same wealth effect as Bitcoin, Roger was called a "scammer" by a large number of investors who bought BCH.

Roger is also well-known in the community for his debt disputes and the resulting verbal battles. In 2022, the news that Roger Ver sued Smart Vega, a subsidiary of Jihan Wu, became the focus of community discussion at the time. Roger Ver claimed that he was frozen $8 million by the latter, but Jihan Wu asked Roger to repay CoinFLEX's debt first.

The debt dispute stems from the huge losses Roger incurred on CoinFLEX, a trading platform in which he participated in the investment, caused by the collapse of Luna. Wu Jihan is a creditor of CoinFLEX. According to Mark Lamb, CEO of CoinFLEX, Roger Ver owes CoinFLEX $47 million worth of USDC, but Roger Ver himself denied these allegations on Twitter, calling these debts rumors and accusing CoinFLEX of owing him a large sum of money.

Charged with "false tax payments" and awaiting extradition trial

Unlike other important figures in the crypto industry who have been charged with crimes, Roger Ver was accused of "criminal activities" by the U.S. Department of Justice, which originated from the tens of thousands of bitcoins he sold when he withdrew from his U.S. citizenship 10 years ago. The official notice reads, "Ver provided false or misleading information to the law firm and appraiser, concealing the true number of bitcoins he and his company owned. As a result, the law firm submitted a false tax return that seriously underestimated the value of the two companies and their 73,000 bitcoins, and did not report any bitcoins owned by Ver personally."

After leaving the United States, Voger Ver sold 70,000 bitcoins in November 2017 for $240 million in cash. This transaction was problematic in the eyes of the U.S. Department of Justice: "Although Ver was not a U.S. citizen at the time, the law still required him to report to the IRS and pay taxes on certain distributions."

Since Roger Ver discovered Bitcoin, Bitcoin has grown more than 60,000 times in 13 years. Looking back, we will find that Roger Ver's mythical halo has nothing to do with his investment ability. His support for Bitcoin stems from his belief in the freedom of economic circulation. Later, he chose BCH from the perspective of monetary economy. He believes that "only by expanding the block size can Bitcoin have all the economic characteristics that a currency should have and become accepted by the mainstream." In a youtube interview in 2022, Roger Ver said, "Many people think I am a BCH maximalist, but I am not. What I want to promote is peer-to-peer electronic cash, or more precisely, a tool that can maximize the free flow of economy worldwide."

From dropping out of school to start a company to becoming a Bitcoin Jesus with billions of assets, to becoming a "BCH scammer", falling into debt lawsuits, and being arrested today, in the huge wealth myth brought by the rise of cryptocurrency over the past decade, Roger Ver's stage only belongs to the very early period. But even if the main crypto activities were in the very early stage, Roger Ver could not escape the iron fist of US regulation.

After the US ETF was passed, many institutions believed that Bitcoin would exceed $100,000 in this bull market. The amount of funds in the crypto world is increasing, and Roger's vision of cryptocurrencies challenging the traditional economic system and supporting anarchism is still a long way off. Today, the total market value of cryptocurrencies has exceeded 2.5 trillion US dollars, and its influence on traditional finance has gradually increased. The US regulatory policy has also been tightened. The heavy fist of supervision not only affects the present and the future, but also the past events experienced by the crypto industry are being examined and liquidated one by one.

Since last year, the US regulatory authorities have launched intensive lawsuits against crypto industry institutions/characters. In addition to SBF, the former CEO of FTX, and DoKwon, the head of Terra, the crypto institutions sued also include ConsenSys, Kraken, Gemini, Celsius Network, Ripple Labs, Uniswap and Coinbase. After CZ was sentenced to 4 months in prison and Roger Ver was arrested, the regulatory pain that the crypto industry will experience will continue.

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