Back in 211, if you had any Bitcoins, you were a super early adopter. Most users were developers, cypherpunks, and libertarians - some drawn by ideology, and others just experimenting with what looked like a fun internet money. The cryptocurrency’s price was anywhere between $1-30, and considering many viewed it either as a fading trend or worthless digital money, this was also the time for opportunists. Many of these trailblazers got filthy rich by either mining or buying BTC around this time. One of these users is often called Bitcoin Jesus, which should foreshadow a lot about his role in the cryptocurrency’s history. But who is Roger Ver? An early Bitcoin advocate and investor who was indicted by a U.S. federal grand jury for fraud and tax evasion. Ver was arrested in Spain on April 28, 2024, released on bail, and is currently residing in Mallorca while awaiting an extradition decision, and even appealed to President Donald Trump for assistance in avoiding extradition Elon Musk, heading the Department of Government Efficiency, responded that Ver had renounced his U.S. citizenship, implying that a pardon was unlikely. Known for his vocal support of Bitcoin, he has founded or been involved in numerous Bitcoin-related projects, including MemoryDealers.com, PassportsforBitcoin.com, Bitcoin.com, the Bitcoin Foundation, as well as early investments in Kraken, Purse.io, Blockchain.com, Bitcoinstore.com, Ripple, BitPay, and BitInstant. Crypto household names are often enshrined in controversy, and Roger Ver is no different. But before jumping to conclusions, let’s see who Roger Ver was before becoming Bitcoin Jesus.
Roger Ver’s Life Before Going Big In Bitcoin
Born in San Jose, California, in 1979, we know little of Ver’s early years. His father was a computer engineer who made sure his son was curious and savvy when it came to technology and innovation. He attended Valley Christian High School and De Anza College between 1997 and 1999, studying economics, maths, and astronomy. He also studied physics at Stanford University, according to his website, but it’s not clear if he ever graduated from any of these three institutions.
MemoryDealers: the site that made Ver big in crypto circles
His road to glory was not conventional: during his college years, he founded his first company, MemoryDealers.com, which specialized in reselling computer components, especially Cisco-related memory and networking equipment. Under Ver’s leadership, the company became a major player in the secondary market for such components while generating massive revenue and employing a global team. MemoryDealers.com was successful in its own right, but it gained wider recognition when it became the first business to accept BTC as payment. As Ver reminisces, people got super excited because of the news, but MemoryDealers.com customers were mostly businesses that weren’t fluid in their finances enough to be able to give Bitcoin a try, so technically, no one purchased anything from his company using BTC.
The world’s very first billboard advertising Bitcoin as a means of payment
But before jumping ahead to his involvement in crypto, there’s one more thread we need to unpack to understand who is Roger Ver: namely, his libertarian views. Running for California State Assembly as a candidate for the Libertarian Party at the age of just 21, Ver has been advocating for minimal state control and voluntary cooperation early on. While he couldn’t get in the State Assembly, he remained a staunch libertarian, and his first major run-in with the law only reaffirmed his political views.
From Pest Control to Federal Prison
Well before MemoryDealers.com could take off, Ver started selling pest control fireworks on eBay. “Pest Control Report 2000” was a loud firecracker that was supposed to scare away birds and other pests on a farmland. The problem? Under U.S. law, these firecrackers were classified as explosives and as such, you had to have a license for selling them. Ver didn’t quite do his research: he sold his product online without proper federal license, and he shipped them via mail, which also violated postal and explosive transport laws. In 2002, Ver pleaded guilty to selling his fireworks without a license, as well as storing and mailing the material. He was sentenced to 10 months in federal prison, followed by 3 years of supervised release. Even though he served his sentence, Ver admits that this case was a turning point politically: “I didn’t do anything wrong. I didn’t hurt anybody. I had nothing but happy customers, and the U.S. government locked me in a cage because of that.”
Roger Ver is an early crypto investor and appeared as a speaker in numerous conferences
You might think that getting punished for selling explosives online is not a form of governmental injustice towards the people, but Ver begged to differ. Once he got involved in crypto, his views got him in even more trouble with the law.
Roger Ver Ripple, BitPay, Blockchain.com, and Other Investments
Once Ver had a considerable fortune from MemoryDealers.com, he wasted no time and started to invest his money. The connection between Roger Ver Ripple is because he invested in the company in its early days due to his support of the technology it offered and its potential uses. David Schwartz, the CTO of Ripple, described Ver as "one of the nicest and most genuine people" he has ever met, and that "he was a huge net positive to both Bitcoin and the world for a long time." Alongside that, he also stated that Ver's connection to Ripple was a significant factor in the problems the US government had with the platform. But how and why did he get into crypto projects? He first heard about Bitcoin on Free Talk Live forum, a libertarian-leaning podcast’s message board. He then read about Satoshi, blazed through the original Bitcoin whitepaper, and had a lightbulb moment. At that point, he thought “Bitcoin is the most important invention in the history of the world since the Internet,” according to an interview with Ver. So, he started buying at around $1, began accepting it at MemoryDealers.com (which in truth helped him and his business with more news coverage but not with sales), and started getting into early crypto projects. And how exactly did he get the money to invest? In 2012, he set up a site called bitcoinstore.com. He basically listed the entire product line of Ingram Micro and Tech Data, two of the largest consumer electronics providers. This was over half a million products sold exclusively for BTC. The twist? Ver was selling everything at cost, without any profit added on top. In the first year alone, they made $4 million in sales.
Ripple And Other Crypto Ventures
Launched in 2012 by Ripple Labs, the XRP ledger was one of Ver’s first investments. He had the money, but at this point, not many knew who is Roger Ver. Also, Ripple was not quite admired by hard-core libertarians as it was a more centralized crypto platform, with most of XRP initially held by Ripple Labs themselves. Despite being a die-hard libertarian himself, Ver saw a business opportunity and became an angel investor in 2013. Although it’s not public how much he invested, Ripple is the biggest name in his portfolio from that time. Ver speaks very little of his ties with Ripple - our experts at PlasBit believe this might be a pragmatic play from his side. He most probably realized that promising crypto projects could get him insane returns, so he couldn’t not invest because of his personal beliefs. Either way, his investment did provide considerable wins after the late 2017 and early 2018 XRP bull run. Here’s another bunch of crypto investments and projects by Ver:
- BTC. This one’s obvious: he’s bought hundreds of thousands of Bitcoin early on, adopted as a currency in his first business, created another built on the cryptocurrency alone, and advocated for it as a non-state form of money for a long time.
- Blockchain.com. Also known as blockchain.info, this was an early wallet and block explorer, and with Ver’s money, it soon became one of the most used crypto wallets globally.
- Kraken. Ver was an early investor in the now-major crypto exchange. Co-founder Jesse Powell stood up for Ver recently, questioning the evidence presented by the IRS that could put Bitcoin Jesus behind bars.
- Bitcoin.com. Serving as the CEO until 2019, Ver helped the platform grow into a hub for wallets, mining pool services, and Bitcoin Cash content.
- BitPay. One of the first processors allowing businesses to accept BTC as payment, BitPay’s early boom was supported by Ver’s investment.
- Shapeshift. This was an early crypto exchange promoting financial privacy and user control. Ver and co-investor Barry Silbert invested over half a million dollars into the project. Shapeshift later lost its good reputation due to a $90-million money laundering scheme that was enabled by the anonymous transactions the exchange was so proud of.
- CoinFlex. Not quite the success story for Ver. As of June 2022, he was a shareholder of the crypto exchange when CoinFlex was forced to pause all withdrawals. Why, you might ask? A counterparty, later named Ver, had liquidity issues and failed to repay a $47 million stablecoin margin call. Ver denied allegations, and a very complex lawsuit emerged in which CoinFlex, Ver, the exchange’s ex-CEO, and a few other parties sued each other. The dispute is still going today.
He organized Bitcoin meetups, spoke at conferences, co-founded the Bitcoin Foundation, supported the development Bitcoin XT, and even self-published a book about the history of BTC. It’s probably no wonder that, looking at this level of relentlessness in the early 2010s, the community slapped the “Bitcoin Jesus” tag on him and ran with it.
Is Roger Ver a US Citizen?
After having several run-ins with the US law and being a die-hard libertarian, the question arises: is Roger Ver a US citizen? No, he currently holds a St. Kitts and Nevis citizenship, after denouncing his US citizenship in 2014 due to disagreements with the US government after being accused of selling illegal explosives. He is currently in Mallorca after spending a month in a Barcelona jail, waiting to be extradited to the US due to being indicted for tax evasion following the denouncement of his US citizenship. He also made it clear that he regards the US as a morally corrupt and violent state, often claiming that he’s been chased away because of his libertarian views. One thing is for sure: the life of an expatriate is not easy. Ver has had multiple adventures, reminding him about the consequences of denouncing his citizenship. First, in 2015, he was denied entry to the USA by the US embassy in Barbados. Officials claimed that it’s not clear if Ver’s ties outside of the USA are strong enough to make him leave the country once his visa expires. Basically, he was denied because authorities feared he’d just stay in the USA and become an illegal immigrant. Later that year, the US embassy in Tokyo granted him a visa, and Ver could speak at a conference in Aspen, Colorado. In the next year, Australia denied him entry for undisclosed reasons, and Ver missed a Bitcoin Cash conference because of this. Before getting caught by the police in Barcelona, he had become the citizen of another Caribbean paradise island, Antigua and Barbuda.
Community Criticism: Savior or Charlatan?
Who is Roger Ver, really? That’s the question the community started asking in 2017. Around that time, BTC’s adoption grew: this meant higher fees, slower transactions, and an overall more congested network. Ver was on team “big blocker”: he supported a larger block size for Bitcoin to unlock more, cheaper, and faster transactions. His views were already public: back in 2015, he was a supporter of the hard fork Bitcoin XT, despite the project fizzling out within a year. Opposing Ver were “small blockers”: these BTC purists wanted to keep blocks small and expand the network via second-layer solutions like the Lightning Network. Ver believed that small blockers were backwards people who betrayed BTC’s original purpose.
Ver famously rage quitted an interview - this is one of the last frames of him before leaving
Either way, Bitcoin Cash (BCH) forked BTC in August 2017. With larger block sizes, cheap & fast transactions, and claims that Bitcoin is cash and not just digital gold, Ver firmly believed that BCH carries the Satoshi’s torch: “I would actually argue the Bitcoin Cash is Bitcoin, and it’s Bitcoin Core that has gone off on a different path. It’s completely different from the original Bitcoin white paper and the Bitcoin that I fell in love with and got involved in it in 2011.” The community begged to differ. The BTC camp was pissed: they called out Ver for being misleading and even fraudulent. Newbies to cryptocurrencies now might think BCH is BTC. He used his site bitcoin.com to promote BCH and confuse visitors about what Bitcoin actually is. BTC purists called him out for being a fraud and a traitor, and some even changed his Biblical nickname to Bitcoin Judas. Unlike the character from the holy scripture, Ver didn’t quite show regret. He still insists that BCH is closer to Satoshi’s vision and that BTC has been hijacked by developers and corporate interests.
Ver's controversial stance on Bitcoin Cash has earned him a dubious Biblical nickname
But Bitcoin Jesus/Judas and his list of perceived crimes don’t end with BCH. Our experts at PlasBit compiled a laundry list of the various accusations against him:
- Promoting Mt.Gox, prompting many to invest on the exchange, only to lose their life savings.
- Censoring r/btc is one of Ver’s favorite pastimes: allegedly, many of his employees from bitcoin.com moderate the popular crypto subreddit and ban people who promote ideas differing from theirs.
- Twitter vote manipulation to promote large block sizes, buy likes, and replies to appeal to the public.
- Rage quitting this interview in which he gets pissed by the interviewer, then proceeding to take a shot at him by… saying he doesn’t make a lot of money.
The list is much longer, so if you want to take a deep dive and get to know who is Roger Ver, this Reddit thread is definitely for you. Roger Ver stands by his views: he still thinks that BCH is true to Satoshi’s ideals about Bitcoin, engages in frequent Reddit and X shouting matches, and keeps defending his moves in the crypto world.
Roger Ver Net Worth: Crunching the Numbers
After all that drama, how much is our antihero worth? The Roger Ver net worth is rumored to be 350,000 Bitcoin, which is worth around 31 billion as of February 2025. This does not include his Bitcoin Cash holdings and stakes in successful crypto companies. Keep in mind that most of his holdings are in crypto, so it's really difficult to assess how much he is actually worth due to the private nature of crypto holdings. According to his recent indictment, he is accused of underreporting his holdings, claiming a net worth of around $18.6 million, which is obviously well below reports about his crypto fortune. Either way, we have to wait for his trial to commence to find out the true size of his net worth. Until then, let’s wrap our heads around the recent legal proceedings, which could bring a lot of bad news to him and his assets.
The Roger Ver IRS Scandal: Denounced Citizenship and Millions Owed
In 2024, A California jury has caught up with Ver’s shady moves in the crypto world. The Roger Ver IRS has indicted Ver with three counts of mail fraud, two counts of tax evasion, and three counts of subscription to a false tax return, due to not paying the amount of taxes he allegedly was supposed to pay on his Bitcoin assets after denouncing his US citizenship. The IRS claims that Roger Ver owes at least $48 million in unpaid taxes. So what does the IRS claim exactly? To officially denounce your citizenship, the IRS requires you to pay your taxes - capital gains taxes included. Ver hired a law firm that would help him with his taxes. The hiccup? Ver provided false or misleading information regarding his holdings, concealing the true number of crypto assets he was holding at the time. As a result, the law firm filed false tax returns that highly undervalued his two companies, MemoryDealers and Agilestar, and their 73,000 BTC, and on top of that, they didn’t report on Ver holding any BTC personally. The indictment doesn’t stop there. According to the IRS, in 2017, Ver’s two companies continued to hold around 70,000 BTC. Allegedly, Ver took hold of this fortune, sold most of it for cash, and got $240 million from the exchange. Again, allegedly, Ver concealed that he took any BTC from his still-US companies from his accountant, which meant that his 2017 individual income tax return didn’t report any gain related to his two companies. The allegations caused the IRS $48 million in damages. In short, Ver didn’t pay his exit taxes when denouncing his citizenship and took most of his crypto from his US companies without reporting it. If found guilty on all counts, Ver could be facing decades in prison.
Arrest In Barcelona & The Current State Of Things
Shortly after the indictment, Ver was arrested in Barcelona while attending a cryptocurrency conference. A month later, he was released on bail and moved to Mallorca to wait for new developments. The US is now seeking extradition to formally begin legal proceedings, while Ver’s legal team has filed a motion to dismiss the indictment: they argue that the charges represent unconstitutional governmental overreach and that Ver relied on professional tax advice while filing his returns. He also insists that he relied on expert help and that he wanted to make sure everything was settled before he’d denounce his citizenship. Furthermore, Ver claims that he knew he was going to be a political target for denouncing his citizenship, even though his actions were in accordance with the law. His defense team added that the IRS only started to issue clear directions on crypto taxes after Ver traveled to Spain.
And why does that matter? At the time of his denouncing his US citizenship, the volatility of BTC was crazy, and it was hard to put a pin on any fortune held in the cryptocurrency. According to Ver’s team, the IRS waited until a fair market value for Ver’s holdings could be determined. Once that happened, the table was set for the indictment. So, how does this all mix with President Trump, Elon Musk, and Ross Ulbricht? Well, the latter received a presidential pardon after being handed two life sentences. Ulbricht was convicted of conspiracy to distribute narcotics, money laundering, and computer hacking. Musk hinted that Roger Ver could be next in the line, saying on X that he asked Trump whether a pardon is possible. Ver is admittedly a huge fan of Ulbricht: he’s previously penned a weird love letter in which Ver compared Ulbricht to abolitionist hero Harriet Tubman, and now it seems like he’s succeeded in appealing to him. Ulbricht has recently started campaigning for setting Ver free after paying his missing taxes.
Ross Ulbricht recently stood up for Roger Ver on X
Not everything seems promising to Ver as of today. Musk, despite his earlier efforts, recently tweeted that “Roger Ver gave up his US citizenship. No pardon for Ver. Membership has its privileges.”. This heavily suggests that Trump will not pardon Bitcoin Jesus anytime soon. Ver even reached out to the President himself via X to consider his case. You can’t blame the guy: he’s facing a grand total of 109 years in prison.
Bitcoin Jesus or Bitcoin Judas?
You’ll be the judge. It’s clear that Ver had a massive impact on kick-starting the crypto scene in the early 2010s. It’s also clear that without his involvement and zeal, Bitcoin wouldn’t be what it is today. On the other hand, it’s highly likely that Ver failed to pay his taxes - something that often happens to those who make massive fortunes with crypto. Does he deserve a century in prison? Some say that denouncing his citizenship didn’t help his case. If that’s true, one might argue that if he actually gets a massive sentence, it’s happened for political reasons. Deciding Ver’s fate is not the PlasBit editorial board’s job, though. We think that Ver’s case is yet another example of why thought-through regulation for crypto gains is crucial in the US. It’s no longer a shady playground for opportunists and con men - and as such, it also deserves attention from lawmakers and prosecutors alike.
