Have you ever heard the saying that bitcoin is ”the most important invention in the history of the world since the Internet”? You probably have because that’s one of the most famous quotes in the crypto space.
But, have you ever wondered who the man behind the well-known saying is? Yes, it’s Roger Ver, who is, by the way, the topic of today’s blog post.
So, without further ado, let’s find out more about this prominent crypto figure.
Roger Ver – who is the notable bitcoin promoter?
Roger Ver is an early investor and dedicated promoter of bitcoin, which earned him the nickname ”Bitcoin Jesus”.
He was born and raised in the global center for high technology and innovation – Silicon Valley.
Roger’s entrepreneurial career started early, and it goes beyond cryptocurrencies and blockchain. For example, he founded Agilestar, a company that became a world leader in optical transceivers.
Also, from 1999 to 2002, he was the CEO of Memory Dealers, a company that offers the largest selection of discounted and custom transceivers, memory, and hardware. And here is the interesting fact: Memory Dealers was the first company to accept bitcoin as a payment method.
However, Roger’s successful career as an entrepreneur was disrupted when he got arrested for illegally selling explosives on eBay. He was convicted to a 10-month prison sentence.
In an interview to Breakermag, Roger talked about his time in prison, saying:
”Probably the most useful thing I learned in prison was that the theories that I’d read about in the economics textbooks—about the origin of money and how something comes to be used as money—I saw with empirical evidence right before my eyes in the prison economy. Having that double confirmation from both the books and the prison economy, that’s what makes you so confident that people would want to start using bitcoin as money early on. So I guess I can thank prison.”
In 2005, after serving the prison sentence, he moved to Japan.
Roger’s crypto career
Roger Ver began investing in cryptocurrencies in 2011. Over the years, he invested in successful blockchain startups such as Ripple, Blockchain.info, Kraken, and Bitpay.
From the very beginning of his crypto career, Roger has been active as a bitcoin promoter. He is one of the five founders of Bitcoin Foundation, and eventually, he went to serve as a CEO of Bitcoin.com.
What’s more, Roger and Jesse Powell, his highschool friend, tried to re-establish the Mt Gox crypto exchange after the bitcoin price crash in June 2011. Roger helped the exchange to stay online, and even responded to queries from worried customers.
In an interview to Decrypt, he blamed Mark Karpeles, Mt Gox CEO, for failing to keep the exchange secure, saying:
”Mark is responsible for not doing a good enough job protecting the funds from the hackers”.
Still, besides being a prominent figure within the crypto community, Roger Ver is probably one of the most controversial as well. For example, during the CoinsBank Cruise, Roger got into a heated debate with Jimmy Song and Tone Vays. The topic of discussion was Bitcoin Cash.
Speaking of Bitcoin Cash…
Bitcoin Cash – the development of bitcoin’s hard fork
The bitcoin vs Bitcoin Cash debate was one of the biggest in the crypto community.
But let’s start from the beginning. Bitcoin Cash was developed as bitcoin’s hard fork. The community was dissatisfied with the network fees, and it wanted to increase the blocksize.
And in October 2017, along with other members of the crypto community, Roger announced his support for Bitcoin Cash. This new cryptocurrency uses the same blockchain as bitcoin, but larger blocks. 8x larger, to be precise. This led Bitcoin Cash to have faster and cheaper transfers compared with bitcoin.
Originally, Roger supported the Bitcoin SegWit2x hard fork, which was scheduled for November 2017. However, when it was time to fork Mr. ver announced to the world that the previous Bitcoin Cash hard fork of July, solved the issues SegWit2x was going to solve aswell. And he stated his endorsements of BCH.
Ever since, Roger continues to promote Bitcoin Cash.
Wrap-up
In 2014, Roger renounced his US citizenship and became a citizen of Saint Kitts and Nevis. Eventually, he was faced with challenges when obtaining a visa for various countries. For example, in 2015, he was denied a visa to enter the United States, and in 2019 he failed to obtain a visa for Australia.
But despite the controversy, Roger Ver remains one of the most popular and recognizable crypto figures. He did a great job with promoting bitcoin, especially in its early days.
And what does he think about his popularity? In the interview to Breakermag, he claims that popularity doesn’t affect him:
”I’m not here to be popular. I’m here to advance the knowledge and understanding that I have of the world and help with the knowledge and understanding other people have of the world we live in.”
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