Roger Ver: 'Undercover U.S. government agents go on LocalBitcoins and arrest people'

What is the best place you visited so far in terms of conference? And just the climate.

The climate in Malta is pretty good. The weather's been fantastic here. I think my favorite conference each year, to be honest, is Anarchapulco, which happens in Acapulco, Mexico each winter. And it's really a fun group of exciting. Technically, it's not even a cryptocurrency conference, but it's a bunch of voluntarists from all over the world get together. And those were the people that really got excited about Bitcoin and digital currencies earliest on. And so it really feels like a bit of a homecoming gathering there to go to Anarchapulco each year.

Tell me the story about you getting into the crypto industry.

So my background as a young man was using computers and studying computer science and studying economics. If you think about it, bitcoin is convergence of both of those two things. So when bitcoin came along, I could understand the computer science side and I could understand the economic side. And I knew that people were going to start using it as money. There was absolutely no doubt in my mind that people were going to start using it as money. And like anything, the price is set by supply and demand. Because the supply of bitcoin was limited as more and more people demanded to start using it as money, the price would have to go up and go up a lot. So my first step was to buy a bunch of bitcoin. My next step was to start investing in the businesses that would make bitcoin easier for people to use as money and building the tools and infrastructure for people to use it as money. And sure enough, that was a pretty successful strategy.

What year was that you said that you bought bitcoin?

That was February of 2011, I remember very clearly. And I was the first person in the entire world to start investing in this ecosystem. There were no projects back then. So my first step was to buy bitcoin. And then I started working on building projects myself. And then the first project that even had any sort of a semblance of structure to it was a company called BitInstant that allowed people to buy their first bitcoin at Walgreens and Walmart and seven eleven and places like that. And so my first investment paid in bitcoin was in bit Instant.

Last year you seemed to choose another side. You decided that you believe in bitcoin cash. Why?

So I would actually take issue with the question itself. So I didn't choose a different side. I'm on the exact same side I've always been on, which is peer to peer electronic cash for the world. And sadly, using a bunch of censorship and propaganda and personal attacks and trolling on the Internet, the BTC version of bitcoin has morphed from having to goal will be peer to peer electronic cash for the world into being a peer to peer science project or store of value project. But I'm someone who wants to enable every individual, everyone on the planet to be able to send and receive money with anyone else instantly, basically for free, and not need permission from anybody else. A peer to peer store of value doesn't enable that. Bitcoin cash does. So if you look at it objectively, Bitcoin cash is the same version of bitcoin described in the bitcoin white paper. It's the same version of bitcoin that I got involved with in 2011. It's the same version of bitcoin that I started investing in. So I'm investing in active in the exact same version of bitcoin that I've been involved in for almost eight years, full time. And the thing that everyone's calling bitcoin in the media today, it has the name bitcoin, but it doesn't have any of the characteristics that made bitcoin popular to begin with, and it doesn't have most of the entrepreneurs that made bitcoin popular to begin with. Bitcoin cash has those characteristics and bitcoin cash has most of those entrepreneurs.

Is that how you usually react to criticism that you get because a lot of people saw you as a bitcoin Jesus, Pardon me, Right now a lot of people feel like you've chosen another way. So is that the way you respond to them?

I think anybody that thinks that I've chosen another way should stop and look at the situation more deeply. Because I have the exact same speech about bitcoin that I've been giving since 2011 and that's that it enables anyone, anywhere on the planet to send and receive any amount of money with anyone, anywhere, instantly, basically for free. And there's nothing anybody can do to stop it. And that speech that I've been giving since 2011 is still completely true about bitcoin cash. It's no longer true about the version of bitcoin that everyone's calling bitcoin. So that means I'm promoting the same version of bitcoin and the thing that has the ticker symbol btc, it's bitcoin in name only at this point. It's not its ESSENCE is no longer bitcoin.

Why do you think bitcoin failed you and your trust?

A bunch of people managed to hijack the project using censorship and literally deleting posts of anybody that advocated for the original bitcoin. And that's why you have almost all the original early adopters of bitcoin. People like myself, the first investor in the entire world in the ecosystem, is busy promoting bitcoin cash today. Gavin Andreessen, the person that Satoshi Nakamoto, the creator of bitcoin, turned over the project to when he left, is a big fan of bitcoin cash and is busy promoting bitcoin cash today. Almost all of the early entrepreneurs, the coinbases, the blockchain.infos the bitcoin.com, the Bitcoin Twitter account, all of those people are busy promoting bitcoin cash because it's the version of bitcoin that we fell in love with back in 2009. 10, 11, 12, 13. And Bitcoin Cash is bitcoin, if you look at it objectively.

So in your opinion, bitcoin cash is the bitcoin? Is it perfect right now?

No. There's always room to improve anything in the world. There's 1001 different cryptocurrencies out there competing for market share. And at the end of the day, that's a good thing. It's a Darwinian evolution of cryptocurrencies. And at the end of the day, we wind up with stronger, more robust, more useful cryptocurrencies for the world to use. And bitcoin BTC is not guaranteed to be the winner in the end. Neither is bitcoin cash. And if something better comes along that brings more economic freedom to the world and has the ability to give more people more control over their own finances, I'll gladly promote that. I'm going to promote whatever I think is the best tool to bring more economic freedom to the world. And today I think that tool is bitcoin cash. But tomorrow, if it were something different, I would promote something different. But today it's very clearly bitcoin cash.

You've mentioned recently that adoption has been failing it. So we don't have mass adoption. Right, right.

For btc. Yeah. So the BTC version of bitcoin has literally been having reverse adoption. You have businesses that used to accept it stop, and then you have these BTC nutcases cheering and saying this is success. When people stop using the BTC version of bitcoin, that's just absolutely mind boggling. To me. And I'm glad not to be a part of that community any longer. I'm glad to be a part of the peer to peer electronic cash system community. So.

And there is mass adoption for other cryptocurrencies.

I think the ones that are the most useful will be the ones that are used by the most number of people. So I'm a fan of the privacy coins I think are fantastic. The Monero, the zcash, the Z coins, those are really interesting. The ICO points, platform tokens, of course. Ethereum is incredibly interesting. Bitcoin cash has tokens on bitcoin cash now as well, which ICOs are happening on bitcoin cash. So anything that's useful people are going to use. And I'm not married to any one single cryptocurrency. I'm used to the ones that are most useful to me in my life and today that's bitcoin cash. But I'm not hostile to anything else other than maybe the people that hijacked the bitcoin brand name, the people like myself built up into the ecosystem that it was today and they've morphed it into something that's not bitcoin. I'm a little bit upset and annoyed by that, but.

Oh, well, there are a lot of jurisdictions that tend to accept crypto or be very friendly to blockchain and crypto ecosystems.

New York is not one of them. Yeah.

So my question is actually about the United States. What do you think in general about the crypto regulations there? Are they fair, given the fact that they're regulated by the 1913 year?

No, they're not fair. They literally have secret undercover government agents going on local bitcoins and then trying to buy bitcoins from people. When they sell them the bitcoins they arrest the people and toss them in jail for years. This is madness. It needs to stop. So shame on the US for doing that sort of thing. No civilized country would lock people in jail for years for selling bitcoin to another person who wants to buy it because they didn't get permission from some politicians. Madness happening in the U.S. and man, you're living on the edge doing business in the US when it comes to cryptocurrency, you're living dangerously to do so.

So what is the most friendly crypto ecosystem?

We're filming this here in Malta. Malta is definitely towards the top of that list, if not at the very top. So of course it's the countries that have the most economic freedom around the world. So it's the Singapores, the Hong Kongs, this one, Switzerland, the Maltas, the Cypresses. The US is falling farther and farther down that list of countries with economic freedom around the world. And as someone who's originally from the US it's sad to see that. But the truth is the truth, regardless of how it makes me feel.

What is the future for the crypto industry and block treatment?

The future is more and more adoption, more and more usage, more and more integration into this society that we live in around the world. And the regulations can only slow it down. It can't stop it.

What about the price of cryptocurrency? They are very volatile.

This year BTC basically had it on lock where they could. They were going to have 99% of the market share around the world until they committed economic suicide by limiting the ability of people to use BTC version of Bitcoin. And so now there's a thousand one different cryptocurrencies competing with Mark for market share. There's more than 1,001 different tokens competing for market share. It's really, really hard to know. But as an investor you should look for the tokens or the cryptocurrencies that are the most useful. And the ones that are the most useful are the ones that are going to be used by the most number of people. And the ones that are used by the most number of people that have a limited supply are the ones that will have the highest price. So that's what you should look at for as an investor.

Cointelegraph, like subscribe and Hodl.