Roger Keith Ver (born 27 January 1979[1]) is an early investor in Bitcoin, Bitcoin-related startups and an early promoter of Bitcoin, and sometimes known as Bitcoin Jesus.[2][3] He now primarily promotes Bitcoin Cash.[4][5]
Ver began investing in bitcoin in early 2011.[10][2] The first investment he made was for Charlie Shrem’s Bitinstant.[11] Ver's investment allowed the company to hire a designer and another programmer.[12] He invested over a million dollars into new Bitcoin-related startups, including Ripple, Blockchain.com, BitPay,[13] and Kraken.[14] In 2011, Ver's company Memorydealers was the first to accept Bitcoin as payment.[15] He has been a prominent supporter of Bitcoin adoption and saw Bitcoin as a means to promote economic freedom.
He is one of the main proponents of a larger block size for the Bitcoin blockchain. He supported the development of Bitcoin XT as a hard fork method towards an increase. Ver and his high school friend Jesse Powell attempted to re-establish the Mt Gox exchange during the June 2011 Bitcoin price crash.[16]
Ver was CEO of Bitcoin.com[18] until 1 August 2019, when he transitioned to executive chairman. In early 2020, Fortune Magazine mistakenly referred to Ver as the co-creator of Bitcoin Cash.[19]
CoinFlex
As of June 2022, he was a shareholder in CoinFLEX, a centralized yield crypto exchange and he is rumoured to be in a large amount of debt, which caused problems for the site.[20][21] On 23 June 2022, CoinFlex paused withdrawals after a counterparty, which it later named as Ver, experienced liquidity issues and failed to repay a $47 million stablecoin margin call.[22]
Brazilian jiu-jitsu as one of his major passions in life. Ver can be seen in videos competing in BJJ world championships[29] and has achieved the rank of brown belt.[30]
Legal issues
In 2002, Ver pleaded guilty to selling explosive materials without a license, as well as illegally storing and mailing them. Ver sold at least 14 pounds of a brand called "Pest Control Report 2000" fireworks as large firecrackers on eBay, stored them in a residential apartment building, and mailed them to customers via the U.S. Postal Service. He was sentenced to 10 months in federal prison.[14][24][6][31] The manufacturer was later forced to stop making and selling the product, which contained gunpowder far above the legal limit for consumer firecrackers.[32]
He was arrested in Spain on U.S. tax evasion charges in April 2024.[33][34] In December 2024 Ver's attorneys filed to have the case dismissed and Ver was still in Spain (where he had been arrested by Spanish authorities) fighting extradition to the US.[35]