Keynote speaker at Bloomberg Invest Asia event: Roger Ver
Bitcoin Jesus is back. After a year of social-media silence, Roger Ver – who earned the moniker for his evangelical-like advocacy – is the latest crypto pioneer to voice his support for Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter.
Like many early cyberpunks and libertarians who came to Twitter to help popularize crypto, Ver said in an interview that he is optimistic that Musk will end “censorship” on the social media platform.
Coinbase Global Inc. Chief Executive Officer Brian Armstrong called Musk’s planned purchase “a resounding victory for free speech.”
“It will definitely make Twitter more attractive,” said Ver, who has 742,000 followers on the site. “I’m really grateful that Musk is calling out censorship.”
It’s been a year since my last tweet today.
Think about how quickly time flies.Make sure you are spending it on important things.#family #Friend #cryptocurrency #freedom
— Roger Ver (@rogerkver) April 26, 202
Even though he is still often referred to by the nickname, Ver, 43, hasn’t been a supporter of the biggest cryptocurrency for some time as he says it deviates from its original purpose as an alternative currency. And that Microstrategy Inc. Many current high-profile supporters, such as CEO Michael Saylor, are not fans.
“He talks about how bitcoin is packet encrypted — it’s techno-bubble nonsense,” Ver said.
Ver is now a fan of Musk’s favorite cryptocurrency, Dogecoin. Musk called Dogecoin the “people’s crypto,” and Ver said it’s faster and even cheaper to use than bitcoin.
“Dogecoin is much better,” Ver said. “It’s cheaper and more reliable. If I had to choose three contenders [for the world’s dominant cryptocurrency]They will be Doge, Litecoin and Bitcoin Cash.”
Emotions are far from where Ver began. After the discovery of bitcoin in 2011, when it traded for less than $1, Ver would go on about the cryptocurrency at meetups and backyard barbecues, before going into the big-time conference stages.
Keynote speaker at Bloomberg Invest Asia event: Roger Ver
He co-founded the startup, now known as Blockchain.com, which in March raised funding that gave it a valuation of $14 billion. He said he was an early investor in payment processor BitPay and crypto startup Ripple.
When the bitcoin network protested a software upgrade in 2017, Ver switched allegiance to a split-off version called bitcoin cash, which he believed to be true to the vision of bitcoin’s anonymous creator, Satoshi Nakamoto. Nowadays, Ver has many coins including Ether, Monero, XRP, etc.
“I am definitely still a crypto whale,” he said. “I’ve always had a wide mixed basket of cryptocurrencies. I was never a bitcoin or bitcoin cash maximalist.”
Bitcoin Cash underperformed bitcoin, whose value has increased more than threefold since the split in late 2017.
According to CoinMarketCap, the market cap of Bitcoin Cash is approximately $5.8 billion, while that of Bitcoin is approximately $760 billion. Its value peaked just after the split and never came back. This is down by more than 80% since last May.
The Native American is now a citizen of St. Kitts and Nevis. Their PassportsForCrypto.com website, which uses Bitcoin Cash, helps individuals apply for Caribbean country citizenship.
Despite its name, their bitcoin.com is really focused on advancing bitcoin cash. The site has more than 30 million registered digital wallets, Ver said.
Long offering crypto trading on its centralized exchange, bitcoin.com, is expected to launch a decentralized exchange this summer, allowing people to trade with each other without intermediaries.
This month, bitcoin.com ended the sale of a token called Versus to be used on the bitcoin.com site, with a second token sale soon to follow.
Ver expects the coin to have a market cap of “in the billions” once trading begins.
(Except for the title, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)