Roger Ver
Roger Keith Ver is an early investor in Bitcoin and Bitcoin-related startups, and a notable promoter of the cryptocurrency. Born in San Jose, California in 1979, Ver attended Valley Christian High School before dropping out of De Anza College to pursue his business interests
Ver attempted a run for California state assembly in the Libertarian party.
Ver served as the CEO of MemoryDealers.com from 1999 to 2012, and in 2000, he ran for the California State Assembly as a candidate for the Libertarian Party. However, in 2002, Ver pleaded guilty to selling explosive materials without a license, illegally storing and mailing them, and was sentenced to 10 months in federal prison.
Ver began investing in Bitcoin in 2011, and his first investment was for Charlie Shrem’s Bitinstant, which allowed the company to hire a designer and another programmer. He invested over a million dollars into new Bitcoin-related startups, including Ripple, Blockchain.com, BitPay, and Kraken. In 2011, Ver's company Memorydealers was the first to accept Bitcoin as payment, and he has been a prominent supporter of Bitcoin adoption, promoting it as a means to promote economic freedom.
Ver was one of the five founders of the Bitcoin Foundation, and he wants Bitcoin to rival major fiat currencies. He is one of the main proponents of a larger block size for the Bitcoin blockchain, and he supported the development of Bitcoin XT as a hard fork method towards an increase. Ver also served as the CEO of Bitcoin.com until August 2019, at which point he transitioned to Executive Chairman.
Ver now primarily promotes Bitcoin Cash, which he sees as fulfilling the intended and original purpose of the "Bitcoin White Paper", first published in 2009 by Satoshi Nakamoto, in which Nakamoto referred to Bitcoin as a peer-to-peer electronic cash system.
In June 2022, there were reports suggesting that he owned shares in CoinFLEX, a centralized yield crypto exchange. However, there were rumors circulating that he was dealing with a significant amount of debt which was causing issues for the platform. CoinFlex also encountered problems with withdrawals when a counterparty, later identified as Ver, experienced liquidity issues and could not repay a $47 million stablecoin margin call, resulting in a temporary pause in withdrawals.
