Roger Ver: A Closer look at his Corruption and Bitcoin Cash

Prologue​

As a natural lover of Litecoin (LTC) and what it aims to bring to the space, its honest, and its business strategy led by Charlie Lee's The Litecoin Foundation, I found myself watching the 1:30hr Doug Polk Podcast with LTC creator Charlie Lee (former google employee, Coinbase Engineer).

I was pretty excited to here Charlie Speak with Doug, since they are both really calm and seem like very humble people who truly want crypto to succeed. The podcast went over a bunch of topics from the problems with NEO's failing BFTC consensus algorithm (Which I will make another post about), NANO, and of course, Roger Ver and his ideas/vision for Bcash, Bitcoin cash, or whatever you want to call it.

Although this post will focus on Roger Ver and some of the things said about him on Doug Polk's podcast, as well as other sources, I encourage all of you to watch this interview, as it will help you understand the vision behind LTC, BTC, and a whole lot of other helpful information. This is truly one of the best interviews of Charlie's I have ever watched (I have watched them all).

Video link:
​

Please note that during this interview, Charlie and Doug have an extensive conversation about Roger Ver and the divide of BCH and BTC holders towards the middle of the interview. It is VERY important that you listen to what Charlie has to say, because he is truly an honest guy, has been there since the beginning, and unlike Roger, and better knowledge of the technical side of Bitcoin and the Block chain and has some very interesting things to say on the topic.

Now Moving on to the main topic, which Is Roger Ver. Throughout this post I will be dividing main ideas and points into Chapters, a list of which can be found below. More chapters will be added as time goes buy, and I hope to make this into a much longer book focused on the unprofessional and bad business practices in the Cryptocurrenc community.

Chapter 1: Who is Roger Ver

1.1 Backstory​

Roger Ver is a very complicated person, and to understand him and what he has done in/for the space, you really have to go back to the beginning. I wont go into too much detail for the sake of time, but I will give you a basic insight to who Mr. Ver is.

This Quote from Wikipedia gives some basic insight about his beginnings.

"He was born in San Jose. He attended De Anza College for a year, dropping out to pursue his business interests. He moved to Japan in 2006.[5] He became a citizen of Saint Kitts and Nevis and renounced his United States citizenship in 2014.[6][5][7] In 2015, he was denied a visa to reenter the United States by the U.S. Embassy in Barbados, which claimed that he had not sufficiently proven ties outside of the United States that would motivate him to leave at the end of his visit, causing fears he might become an illegal immigrant[8][7][9] - but later in the same year his visa was approved by the U.S. Embassy in Tokyo, and he visited the United States in June 2016 to speak at a conference in Denver, Colorado.[10][6] While in prison Ver taught himself Japanese. According to an interview he gave in 2016, Ver describes Brazilian Jiu Jitsu as one of his major passions in life.[11]"

1.2 Ebay Explosives and Prison​

"In 2002, Ver pleaded guilty after selling explosives, marketed as Pest Control Report 2000, on eBay, which the U.S. Department of Justice described as "dealing in explosives without a license", and he was sentenced to 10 months in federal prison.[5][8][14][15] The Missouri company, Max 2000 Inc. that had manufactured Pest Control Report 2000, agreed to cease selling the agricultural firecrackers in January 2003 after selling more than one million of them.[16] The company had been selling the product illegally to fireworks wholesalers and retailers from early 1998.[17] Pest Control Report 2000 had been used nationally to control infestations of birds. The explosives were banned because they could cause serious injuries or death.[17]"
- Wikipedia

1.3 Roger's Start in CryptoCurrency​

Ver began investing in bitcoin in early 2011.[2] The first investment he made was for Charlie Shrem’s Bitinstant.[18] Ver's investment allowed the company to hire a designer and another programmer.[19] He invested over a million dollars into new bitcoin related startups including Ripple, Blockchain.info, Bitpay[20] and Kraken.[5] In 2011, Ver's company Memorydealers was the first to accept bitcoin as payment.[21] His early advocacy for bitcoin earned him the moniker of Bitcoin Jesus.[2]

In 2012, he created bitcoinstore.com with hundreds of thousands of items available for purchase with bitcoin. In May 2014, an old email account used by Ver was hacked and used in a failed attempt to ransom bitcoin.[22] In late 2015, Ver hosted the largest bitcoin AMA on Reddit.[23] He is the CEO of Bitcoin.com[24] and owns its domain name. Ver gained control of bitcoin.com in April 2014.

In 2012, Ver was organising bitcoin meetups in Sunnyvale.[25] He is one of five founders of the Bitcoin Foundation. Ver wants bitcoin to rival major fiat currencies.[26] He is one of the main proponents of a larger block size.[26] 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.[25]

In April 2013, Ver was a guest on Fox Business.[27] In May 2014, he was interviewed on Russia Today.[28] In September 2017, he appeared on the Keiser Report to discuss current bitcoin-related developments.[29] In September 2017, Ver was interviewed by Bloomberg Television while attending the BitKan conference in Hong Kong.[30] That same month, he backed[31] Segwit2x, which was called off due to lack of consensus in the community.

In June 2016, Ver was appointed the chairman of the Cryptocurrency Advisory Board for MGT Capital Investments. MGT aims to improve cybersecurity and is headed by John McAfee.[32]"

- Wikipedia

Conclusion to Chapter 1:​

As it may seem, Roger is your basic "got in early" Bitcoin investor, but had more than just a small impact. Roger was in a position to really change the space and grow it to what it has become today. Roger personally financed multiple Bitcoin and Crypto start ups. Roger Ver currently owns the domain and popular website Bitcoin.com, claims to be a "self made millionaire before crypto" (we will get more to that later), and claims that his "victimless crime" that landed him in prison helped him realize how important a decentralized "currency" like Bitcoin can change the world.... But, there is a lot more to this then the classic prison to penthouse story.

Chapter 2: r/BTC , Bitcoin.com, and Bitcoin Cash

2.1 Roger vs. Reddit​

So look, we all use reddit.. r/Dankmemes, r/runecape, and yes, some of us use reddit for crypto news and opinions. Some of us stay to the Subreddit of their favorite coin, some branch out to others for research, and those Doug Polk fans just go on r/cryptocurrency , and here in lies the problem with reddit.

Currently, there are 3 major sub reddits people use for cryptocurencies...

1. r/BTC
2. r/Bitcoin
3. r/CryptoCurrency

Can you guess which one Roger Owns?
You guessed correctly... r/BTC


r/Bitcoin came under attack during the time when major players and the community were discussion blocksize increases and the future of Bitcoin. This led to "censorship" of specific viewpoints on r/Bitcoin by moderators on the site. Some sources will claim that it was straight out censorship, and others will claim that the moderators were only "censoring" post upvoted by bots and fake accounts in order to save redditors from being misled. Nevertheless, because of this r/BTC was created to be a "uncensored" sub reddit for Bitcoin.. but as you will soon see this is no longer the case....


Over the course of a few years, and even today, Roger Ver has used r/BTC as a platform to promote Bcash, make ill-informed assumptions and directives are Bitcoin "Core" (as only roger and Bcash fans call it), and censors apposing view points...

The proof:​

censorship on r/btc · GitHub

/r/btc mod admits to "censoring" threads. • r/btc

The Truth About /r/Bitcoin And /r/btc – Cryptolinks – Medium
(opinion piece but valid)

Quote from the article above... ​

"The appearance of Bitcoin Classic also marks the beginning to the ruling of Roger Ver, The Liar. Around this time, he bought /r/btc and ironically started imposing censorship on /r/btc himself. He also got caught red-handed many times for vote manipulation, buying votes and twitter likes. In sum Roger Ver is most notable for paying millions in social media attacks against Bitcoin. He perfected his social media attacks, not only the only advertisement on /r/Bitcoin was about /r/btc, he constantly stickied /r/Bitcoin bashing posts to his subreddit, he created Bitcoin.com to push his propaganda, paid dozens of Reddit and Medium pseudonymous writers, who are constantly posting walls of spaghetti texts and so on."

And this is exactly correct.


I can go on and on about reddit, but its move onto Bitcoin.com

2.2 Bitcoin.com​

Bitcoin.com is owned and operated by Roger Ver. Some may say Bitcoin.com is Roger's biggest success and is a fairly large site with tons of influence. For the average person, they don't know the different between Bitcoin.org and Bitcoin.com (and arguably, average people will always see Bitcoin.com as Bitcoins official site, since it uses ".com"). But why does this matter? Why does it matter that Roger Ver Owns bitcoin.com, possibly one of the largest Bitcoin news outlet? Well, the answer is pretty easy to understand, but let me give you an analogy...

You are anti-religion. You own a newspaper. That news paper reports on various subjects, but one day, the question of removing religious freedom in the U.S. . Any moral owner would cover the topic in a subjective way right? Correct. Being in Journalism for years, I had to really learn and understand Ethics, and this was something very important to know and understand. Journalist are suppose to be objective, but we all know that today's new rooms are riddled with one-sided views.

Here is a compilation of all of the accusations against Roger Ver and his use of Bitcoin.com as a propaganda outlet to sway users to his view point.

Charlie Lee Calls out Roger Ver:
Charlie Lee [LTC] (@SatoshiLite) | Twitter

Article on Bitcoin.com literally called "Bitcoin cash is Bitcoin":
Bitcoin Cash is Bitcoin – Bitcoin.com​

There are tons of more examples of this, and can be seen simply by visiting Bitcoin.com and viewing the insane bias that laces the company.


So whats the Big deal with Roger and Bitcoin cash anyway? Who really cares? If Roger thinks BCH is BTC then shouldn't we just let him think that and let what happens happen? Maybe, but his corruption is apparent.

2.3 Bitcoin Cash​

So now that I have explained what Roger is doing, I will now explain why, and to understand this, we need to once again, travel back to the Bitcoin scaling debate.

Roger Ver is a firm believer that Bitcoin Cash is the legitimate Bitcoin. Roger does not believe that Bitcoin cash is an alt-coin forked from Bitcoin. Roger is determined to make the world believe that there is Bitcoin cash and Bitcoin core (or Bitcoin as everyone but BCH supports, Roger Ver, and Bitmain calls it). Roger also believes that since Bitcoin Cash "more closely resembles the "Bitcoin" stated in the Bitcoin Whitepaper on Bitcoin.org" that it has the more legitimate claim to being the "real bitcoin". Does this sound ridiculous to you? Well it should.

Here is the problem. Satoshi Nakamoto made a very important decision when creating Bitcoin. He could either make Bitcoin a better PayPal, by increase block size and making transactions faster, or he could hold onto the core values of Bitcoin a a uncensorable decentralized asset and beefed security, and sacrifice utility and speed. However, since Satoshi is either dead, never going to be revealed, or the U.S. government, and since he may never be revealed, he can't come out to say "No Roger, you are wrong".

Because of this, Roger has so much power even in a community based upon decentralization. Roger owns Bitcoin.com, Roger owns r/BTC , Roger is seen as a god to many, and this combined with Ver being a absolute dick to many in the community (examples below), makes for a toxic and hysterical division within the community.

Roger will never call Bitcoin Cash "bcash", because he wishes to co-op/steal the brand. Without "Bitcoin" in it's name, Bitcoin cash stands to be a shitty alt-coin, that doesn't really compared to something like Litecoin or Dash, and Roger Knows this. The saddest part? It is working and Roger knows it.

Chapter 2 Conclusion:​

Roger Ver is manipulative, Thinks Bitcoin Cash is the true Bitcoin, wants "Bitcoin" to be called "Bitcoin Core", and is obviously shilling for BCH the best he can through various outlets like r/BTC, Bitcoin.com, and Twitter, in an effort to better his own financial position through his holding in Bitcoin Cash.

Chapter 3: Examples of Roger's Misleading the public, Temper and Douche-like tendencies, and examples of 20IQ

Ver Claiming he made Andreas a Millionaire:
WhalePanda on Twitter

Claims "Bitcoin Core" should no longer be considered a cryptocurrency
Roger Ver on Twitter

Pushes the Centralized Shapeshift as a way to convert "Bitcoin core store of value tokens" for "Bitcoin cash" ( this is just ridiculous)
Roger Ver on Twitter

MUST WATCH: Roger freaks out on his host, flicks him off, talks about how he is a "self-made multi-millionaire" and cuts interview/debate off early due to host's saying "bcash".
​

I hope you guys enjoyed reading this and I am willing and ready to have a civilized discussion on this topic.

 

What do you gain out of this?

 

What do you mean? Isn't this a discussion thread?

 

What's there to discuss? You're slandering another person and got another man's name in your mouth way too much... Should we make a slandering thread for every scam coin we think is a scam? BCH has major backing and is legit. It will keep pumping in price over time just like other big caps. Don't miss out on the trade because of your bias.

Your favorite coin LTC had it's main guy (Charlie Lee) dump on all of you at the top yet no rage from you guys.... Makes sense lol.

 

I am only stating facts

I can have whomever's name in my mouth as much as I want. Unlike r/BTC, sythe isn't really censored.

Also, if you actually took my advice and watched the first video I linked you would realize why Charlie Lee sold and realize what I am saying isn't "slandering" but rather what 50%+ of the community believes...

At NEO DevCon (I'll get into NEO's problem in a moment) Roger's picture with NEO founder came up and half of the room "booed" him.

It is obvious you have no idea what you are talking about on that topic or Charlie "dumping" his coins, only to donate millions of dollars to the Litecoin Foundation.


And "what's there to discuss?"....?

Well let's see
1. Roger incompetence
2. Reddit censoring
3. Bitcoin Cash's future
4. Is BCH really Bitcoin
5. Opinions of what I posted
6. Etc

So instead of getting upset that I decided to post of facts about the history of Roger, Bitcoin Cash, and the controversy, how about you bring some relevant information to counter anything I listed above, or fuck off?


"I'm wanting to see what people here at Sythe are wanting. I see a lot of scams out there being sold to people, so I'm wanting to provide a potential service for people here at Sythe that is genuine and profitable. " - @BartonsVodka

^ maybe we should discuss scams and malpractice when we see it...

 

Oh and "at the top" is not true. Charlie sold at an average of $205, selling portions of his holding at different times, weeks apart.

Again, you know nothing about him dumping his coin. He is the most influential person on Twitter and in the crypto space. He can say one thing bad about a coin and it can die (it has happened). I'm not even going to go into the reasons Charlie sold, because you'll just call BS anyway.

However, if you want to get into the technical difficulties of BCH, Rogers use of various outlets to confuse and control, the future of BCH, or anything else I outlined, feel free to discuss..

 

Your bias is so cringe. I just have to question people that slander a project without knowing the guy behind it. Whatever floats your boat man. I'm pretty content with a banger of a trade $300 to $4,000 BCHUSD lol.

You make my point of you slandering others for no reason crystal clear, now you're trying to bring me into it and my potential service lol. C'mon man.

Oh well, just was curious as to what you were trying to get at and I think I've got you read, so I'll leave you to it. Good luck with your LTC, think there will be an upcoming pump once again when Charlie loads up enough.

 

LOL

I just gave basically all the information needed about Roger. I even stated how he was the man who really helped exchanges like Kraken get going, and stated how he was a a major player in the progress of cryptocurrency, but wen I see a person manipulate others, try to co-op/steal the Bitcoin brand to make what is basically just another altcoin that can easily be 51% attacked, and then act like a total douchebag, I'm going to call him out.

As as for "bringing me into it" as you say, I only quoted you because you stated how you want to protect people from scams, yet when I have evidence that Roger is using his power and various outlets to manipulate others for his own financial gain, you get butthurt.

I could give a fuck about your "services" or whatever financial advice you are giving (which you should be careful with..) as it doesn't interest me or is in no way related to this post other than the fact we both want to protect people from "scams" which come on many different forms.

Now can you please tell me how me stating FACTS about Roger Ver and what he is trying to do slander? Seriously please explain to me how me showing the users of sythe how manipulative Roger is being, and showing how Roger doesn't even think "Bitcoin" exist and thinks of "Bitcoin" as "Bitcoin core".

Don't try to claim I know nothing about Roger Ver since I have been following Roger since 2013 and know a lot more about him and his views than you do.

If you think what in doing is slander then what is Roger doing when he calls Bitcoin "Bitcpin Core" and tells users to "use shapeshift [ a centralized currency conversion tool ] to swap Bitcoin Core tokens for Bitcoin Cash [what he claims to be "the real Bitcoin"].

You don't see Roger promoting Lightning Network, atomic swaps, or other technologies the rest of the community and "Bitcoin core" as he calls it is working on..


I know bullshit when I see it and Roger is full of it, thus I made this posting to show others what they might be missing in all of this...

But again, I ask you how my post is slander when I have stated multiple times that Roger is an intellegent guy who has really helped crypto get started, but has fallen down the wrong path in order to pump BCH and defame Bitcoin as a "failed experiment".

 

Yet another example of Rogers control and misuse of the @Bitcoin Twitter

So this just happened. I promoted LTC and said bcash multiple times apparently. • r/litecoin

 

I think it's important that people know the difference between btc and bcash if they are new to the crypto space. I think this thread helps people not be tricked by /btc - @Bitcoin - bitcoin.com since Roger does such a good job at manipulating newcomers.

 

It's not slander when it's true. He's EXPOSING Roger Ver, not "slandering" him.

 

Jesus Christ Ethan for somebody as gay as you, you sure talk a lot about things that aren’t men

Roger Ver is literally a criminal, and anybody that owns bcash is a moron for placing their trust in someone with a background as sketchy as his.

 

Thanks for the complement

It's funny because he is literally a convicted criminal. I really don't like to judge people on there past criminal history, but I have ever right to judge his character. He has a huge ego, which may be good and bad for him at times.


He just posted this!

Twitter

What's funny is that

1.

Greg doesn't work for block stream anymore and hadn't for a while. He only puts the logo next to the black "Bitcoin Core" logo to make some connection between the two to paint them as the opposing side and mislead the public into thinking block stream and Greg are evil doers of the Bitcoin Whitepaper to make himself out to look like the good guy.

2.

He added / photoshopped a "Bitcoin Core" logo next to the "7.6%" instead of just leaving "Bitcoin".

No one else calls Bitcoin "Bitcoin Core" LOL I find it actually funny. He went out of his way to get a "Bitcoin Core" logo that not a single exchange or website uses.


3.

Bitcoins transaction cost are not 7.6% ... Don't know where he is getting this number. My guess is he is pulling it from some exchanges, but Roger doesn't understand (or does and is to scared to admit) that exchanges pay over priced Bitcoin transactions fees to queue up transactions first because they have so much volume they can offord to do so in order to keep happy clients. This is why Coinbase transactions settle so fast. These cost never even trickle down to the users since they eat the cost to make a better User Experience.


Almost nothing he said in the post of true... But who am I to slander

 

Update: Latest bullshit from roger and Bitcoin.com

Roger Ver on Twitter

 

I feel like I'm watching the ETH/ETC debacle all over again. Mind you, I enjoy the argument surrounding the philosophy of crypto being infallible so that the old coin is the real one etc. But these people blow crypto politics out of proportion.