Roger Ver

Roger Ver is an early investor in bitcoin-related startups. He has been a prominent supporter of bitcoin adoption and saw bitcoin as a means to promote economic freedom. He now promotes

, a hard fork of the cryptocurrency created with the intent to fix issues such as high fees and long transaction confirmation times.

Born and raised in Silicon Valley, he sold explosives on eBay and later pleaded guilty to three related felony charges. He served 10 months in prison, then moved to

in 2005. He renounced his United States citizenship in 2014 after obtaining a Saint Kitts and Nevis passport. He identifies as a libertarian, an anarcho-capitalist, peace advocate, and an advocate for individualism and voluntaryism.

Ver began investing in bitcoin in early 2011. The first investment he made was for Charlie Shrem’s Bitinstant. Ver’s investment allowed the company to hire a designer and another programmer. He invested over a million dollars into new bitcoin-related startups including

, Blockchain.info, Bitpay and

. In 2011, Ver’s company Memorydealers was the first to accept bitcoin as payment. His early advocacy for bitcoin earned him the moniker of Bitcoin Jesus.

In 2012, Ver was organizing bitcoin meetups in Sunnyvale. He is one of five founders of the Bitcoin Foundation. Ver wants bitcoin to rival major fiat currencies.

He is one of the main proponents of a larger block size. 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

exchange during the June 2011 bitcoin price crash.

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