Among the founders of the cryptocurrency community, it is difficult to find a figure better known than Roger Ver. He was not among the first enthusiasts who developed the project of a decentralized digital currency and began to promote it on the Internet, but largely thanks to the convictions and efforts of this particular person, bitcoin today has become a part of the lives of millions of people. For those who have already plunged into the world of cryptocurrencies, and for those who are just beginning to comprehend this new phenomenon of the digital economy, Roger Vera's personality is interesting, first of all, as an example of how Bitcoin works wonders and turns an ordinary investor into a billionaire. However, behind the spectacular financial success lies the path of a person who, having learned important lessons for himself from the events, was able to take several important steps in order to translate into Bitcoin not only the idea of ​​digital money.

Roger Ver bought his first bitcoins in 2011.

He made his fortune and fame thanks to Bitcoin, although he is currently one of its main detractors.

The history of Bitcoin is also a history of disagreements. Some have been among the first big adopters of BTC, but they have been against the development of the project that Satoshi Nakamoto started in 2009. Speaking in favor of a different Bitcoin, they have attacked and tried to discredit the protocol of this cryptocurrency. This is the case of Roger Ver.

Despite being called the “Jesus of Bitcoin” at the time, Ver has been very critical of Bitcoin and its future. In addition, he became one of the main leaders of an antagonistic project, raising the need to improve and overcome it in the way he sees fit. We are talking about Bitcoin Cash (BCH) , born as a fork of the main cryptocurrency on the market.

From the little knowledge i have, i will do my very best to bring you some details about Ver's life, his relationship with Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash, as well as his distancing and attacks against the cryptocurrency created by Satoshi Nakamoto.

Born for Business

The beginning of Roger Vera's story is reminiscent of the plot of a Hollywood film about a gifted young man whose dreams were overnight destroyed by life circumstances. He was born in the heart of Silicon Valley, San Jose, and raised in a prosperous family. Having libertarian political views, Roger Ver at 20 decided to become a candidate for the Legislative Assembly of California, but was arrested during the election campaign. The official reason for this was the illegal sale of explosives used by farmers to scare away birds through eBau. However, according to Roger himself, the real reason for the arrest, and then a rather harsh sentence of 10 months in prison, was his political activity.. In high school he sold candy and by the end of this stage of training, he had bought a Ford Mustang.

This purchase led to a lawsuit with his family, who disapproved of him. Ver ended up moving out of the family home, as his father tried to sell the vehicle and the young man decided to call the police, who threatened his father with arrest if he did not withdraw the sale advertisement.

Roger Ver went from being the Jesus of Bitcoin to one of its most bitter enemies.

His academic transit was erratic and Ver did not complete any university degree, dedicating himself fully to business, especially investing in startups and other personal businesses.

In 2002, he pleaded guilty to selling, storing and distributing explosives without a license. According to the indictment, Ver bought 49 pounds of explosives and sold at least 14 pounds through eBay. For this he was imprisoned for 10 months.

As a result of this event, Ver renounced his US citizenship, becoming a citizen of Saint Kitts and Nevis, two small Caribbean islands, through a citizenship-by-investment plan that the “Jesus of Bitcoin” took advantage of in 2014, before reside in Tokyo, Japan.

Since 2011 he got involved with Bitcoin, buying 25,000 BTC with a price of USD 1 per bitcoin, becoming one of its main advocates. Despite not being a developer or being directly related to computing or cryptography, Ver became a celebrity.

When Roger Ver first heard about Bitcoin, he was already a fairly wealthy man. The project of the world cryptocurrency fascinated him with the fact that, unlike ordinary money, he asserted the idea of ​​independence from intermediaries in the person of the government and banks. In an interview, Roger always emphasizes that he is driven not by a passion for enrichment, but, above all, by the philosophy of freedom. Bitcoin, from his point of view, is a way to make the world a better place by separating financial assets from the state, which spends money received from the population on suppressing civil rights and waging wars.

Being a consistent supporter of the idea of ​​freedom, not only in words, but also in deeds, Roger Ver has repeatedly provided financial assistance in the form of bitcoin to anti-war and liberalist movements. At the same time, his broad charitable activities became one of the tools for promoting a new type of monetary assets. The free distribution of cryptocurrency significantly increased the number of users of the bitcoin network, contributed to the expansion of the scope of use of cryptocurrency. This method first showed its value in September 2011, when Roger donated 15,000 bitcoins to the Free State Project.

The "Jesus of Bitcoin"

Roger's persistence and dedication was appreciated by the bitcoin community, which gave him the nickname "Bitcoin Jesus". However, the owner of Memory Dealers gave Bitcoin not only his time, but also significant amounts of money. His bitcoin buying deals during the periods of general frustration with cryptocurrency after the collapse of the Mt.Gox exchange seemed to be the height of recklessness. But it was these investments that, over time, multiplied the fortune of Roger Vera, turned him into a major player in the cryptocurrency market.

"Bitcoin is the most important invention in the history of the world since the Internet," he even said in 2011. Ver focused his business and investment vocation in Bitcoin, supporting nascent companies in this ecosystem.

Thus, he made his first investment in Charlie Shrem's company, Bitinstant. But Ver didn't stop there. He invested more than a million dollars in nascent companies such as Ripple, Blockchain.com, Bitpay, Purse.io, and Kraken , several of which became references within the ecosystem. In addition, as CEO of MemoryDealers.com, he promoted the adoption of Bitcoin as a means of payment. It is estimated that the company received about 400,000 BTC thanks to this decision.

One of his first investments was in the company of Charlie Shrem, another renowned early adopter of Bitcoin.

Ver was also a founding member of the Bitcoin Foundation, a now defunct organization, created between 2011 and 2012 to help the development and knowledge of cryptocurrency. However, Ver soon began to have discrepancies with the design of Bitcoin, suggesting the need that, in order to become a global value exchange network, it was necessary to increase the size of the blocks generated on the chain.

Additionally, Ver recommended using Mt. Gox services just weeks before his alleged hack, and given his influence in the community, the council may have influenced the fact that several new bitcoiners were affected by the alleged hack suffered by the platform run by Mark Karpeles .

The one who was the "Jesus of Bitcoin" became an open enemy of its development, raising the need to improve and overcome it. That is why Ver soon became a standard bearer of Bitcoin Cash (BCH), a cryptographic project in accordance with his position on the chain's blocks and the operation of transactions.

Author Bitcoin: BCH

Ver's distancing from Bitcoin and Bitcoin Core, the main development team of the most widely used client for the Bitcoin blockchain, became increasingly marked. "If Bitcoin is more expensive or slower than traditional financial systems, no one is going to use it," he noted in 2017.

However, Ver did not want to part with the Bitcoin brand, so he always referred (and still refers to) the new project as Bitcoin , despite the fact that the changes he proposed completely modified the nature of the cryptocurrency, generating a new product. , a different instrument.

Roger Ver, along with Jihan Wu and Craig Wright, became one of the main spokespersons for a project that addressed the supposed need to increase the limit of blocks, proposing to increase the limit of the size of the network's blocks original of Bitcoin, going from 1 MB to 8 MB and from there to the current 32 MB , being the first direct fork of Bitcoin.

Ver was also one of the main supporters of Bitcoin Unlimited , whose proposal was to make a hard fork to remove the limit on the size of the blocks. Alongside Bitmain, Bitcoin XT and nChain, Bitcoin Unlimited and Roger Ver forked Bitcoin.

The developer Deadalnix created the first client of this implementation, Bitcoin ABC, which removes the limit on the size of the blocks by also suspending the activation of SegWit in the network of the new cryptocurrency, BCH. The genesis block of this chain was mined on August 1.

Ver broke away from Bitcoin, being extremely effusive in defending the benefits of Bitcoin Cash.

Despite the fact that BCH was born from BTC, Ver has insisted that this new cryptoasset is the "real" Bitcoin. In fact, Ver carries out his project using bitcoin.com as a web portal , and the user @bitcoin on Twitter , without clarifying that it is about BCH and not BTC, Nakamoto's cryptocurrency.

In addition to these tricks to position his author Bitcoin, Ver has directly clashed with members of the Bitcoin community such as Jhon Carvallo, Jimmy Song, Andreas Antonopoulos , among others. Ver moved away from BTC, promoting BCH as the true Bitcoin, global in scope and with low commissions, making special boast of charitable projects in developing countries that are sponsored or financed by the cryptoasset.

Ver has also been especially sensitive with the case of Ross Ulbricht , creator and operator of Silk Road, sentenced to life imprisonment by the US justice. Roger Ver has stood up to the US government, claiming the injustice of the sentence.

Despite becoming a millionaire thanks to Bitcoin and its skyrocketing appreciation, the "Jesus of Bitcoin" long ago ceased to support its success , becoming an outspoken critic of the cryptocurrency, which he claims is too slow to be global money and it is in the hands of Bitcoin Core and Blockstream, although without credible evidence of these accusations.

We @noise.cash wishes you a Happy Birthday @Roger.Ver we love you!!!!