Roger Ver's first public interview after being released on bail: After being a "Bitcoin Jesus" for 15 years, why I no longer support Bitcoin

Original title: Why the Intel Agencies Want to Track Your Every Transaction and Throw Roger Ver in Jail for Life
Original translation: zhouzhou, BlockBeats

Editor's note:In the interview, Roger Ver shared that he was politically persecuted by the US government for participating in cryptocurrency activities. He also mentioned that the discussion platform of the early Bitcoin community was censored and the voices supporting Bitcoin payment were suppressed. This whole process distorted the essence of Bitcoin and may make it a new financial control tool. Roger revealed the dark history of how the government and intelligence agencies have hindered and changed the development of Bitcoin in the past decade.

Bitcoin originally carried the ideal of decentralization and free payment, aiming to provide global users with financial tools independent of government control. However, with the popularity of Bitcoin, the intervention of governments and intelligence agencies gradually changed its original intention. The guest mentioned in the interview that the discussion platform of the early Bitcoin community was censored, and the voices advocating Bitcoin as a payment tool were suppressed. Instead, Bitcoin was shaped into a digital asset propaganda. This process distorted the essence of Bitcoin and made it a new financial control tool.

The following is the original content (the original content has been reorganized for easy reading and understanding):

"Because I told the truth about Bitcoin, the US government wants to execute me politically"

Host: Roger, let me summarize your situation. This is what I read: You are being requested by the US Department of Justice to be extradited from your native Spain, a Western European ally, to the United States, facing a possible life sentence for tax evasion, with a total sentence of 109 years. However, you are not a US citizen, and you were not a US citizen during the period when you were accused of evading US taxes. So whenever I see news about the US government trying to extradite someone for 109 years in prison for tax evasion, I wonder if this isn't just about taxes. Is there some other reason why the US government is mad at you and wants you to spend the rest of your life in prison?

Roger: To be honest, I don't think it has anything to do with taxes. They're just mad at me for not being obedient and not "listening."

I was the first person in the world to start investing in the Bitcoin ecosystem and in businesses that enable people to use Bitcoin as money, as cash. I was promoting Bitcoin since 2011, saying: Stop using dollars, euros, yen, and use Bitcoin instead.

We now have an alternative where anyone can have full control over their own money, without the permission of any politician or government. And for governments that control people by controlling the money supply, this freedom is a threat to their power. So obviously, they don't like this very much.

I knew this kind of thing was dangerous, so I thought the safest thing to do was not to become a US citizen. So in 2014, I gave up my US citizenship and became a "world citizen". However, my new citizenship is St. Kitts, a beautiful island in the Caribbean. I thought it would be a little safer and I could promote Bitcoin from there. I always try to follow the law, even if I may not agree with many of them, because I know that when you are promoting things that change the world, governments often don't like it and may target you.

So I told my tax lawyer and all the people involved that everything must be done perfectly and not give the US government any reason to find fault. But more than ten years after I gave up my US citizenship, just after I published a book about the hijacking of Bitcoin - the book revealed how Bitcoin was no longer a global peer-to-peer cash, but a digital asset that people only used to speculate on the price, rather than a global currency that could compete with the US dollar, the euro, and the yen - the world exploded after the book was published, and it was revealed that some people who claimed to work for intelligence agencies hijacked Bitcoin, and I was arrested and imprisoned in a Spanish prison, and I could be sentenced to more than 100 years in prison.

Related reading:《The "Bitcoin Jesus" of the year is now awaiting trial》- BlockBeats

I am 45 years old today, and the chances of living to 109 years later with existing technology are not very high, so this is equivalent to letting me die in prison. They are just upset because of what I said and the way I promoted cryptocurrency. I am the founder of bitcoin.com, the co-founder of XRP and blockchain.com, and many other companies. I almost laid the foundation for the entire first generation of cryptocurrency companies. So, they are extremely dissatisfied with my attempt to promote a world currency that can compete with the US dollar.

Moderator: I'll add a personal comment. I'm an American citizen. I'm not against the dollar itself. The problem is that the dollar is badly managed. I think it's the failure of those who control it - the US government and the Federal Reserve - that has made the dollar look unreliable in the long run. Their failure has forced people to consider other options, and Bitcoin is one of the most promising alternatives.

I remember it very clearly because I'm 55 years old now. When Bitcoin first appeared, its idea was to provide people with a way to control their own money and use it to trade and buy goods and services without being controlled. But now it has become an asset class, and I'm curious about how all this happened. If you can, please explain in detail the point in your book that the covert operations of intelligence agencies played a big role in this.

How was Bitcoin "hijacked" by intelligence agencies?

Roger: If we want to talk about this, we have to go back 25 years. I was a young man running for office in California as a libertarian, advocating for lower taxes and less government, this was in 2000.

If anyone remembers, there was an incident in Waco, Texas in the late 1990s. There was a religious group that included some adults and a lot of children, some of whom were only three, four, or five years old. Even though their parents were religious fanatics, the ATF (ATF) and the FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation) actually set fire to these people and burned their homes to ashes. Afterwards, they took pictures with the children's bodies, which is completely unacceptable. The FBI and ATF are a bunch of murderers in this matter. Even if the parents of the children are breaking the law, you can't kill children for this reason, but that's what they did.

In debates with Republican and Democratic candidates, I called the ATF murderers for doing this. They were very upset about it. I was 20, 21 years old, had seven or eight employees, and was just starting a business. And I was the only person in the world who was prosecuted for selling fireworks on eBay, even though there were a lot of other sellers selling them, like Cabela's Sporting Goods Catalog was selling these fireworks. These fireworks were sold everywhere, and I was the only one who was prosecuted for selling them without a license. It was not because I sold fireworks without a license, but because they were angry about what I said.

In one discussion between my lawyer, the prosecutor, and the ATF agent, the ATF agent even slammed his hand on the table and said, "Didn't you hear what he said?" They were referring to me calling them murderers. In fact, if you burn a bunch of children to death, you are a murderer, which they did.

I ended up signing a plea deal and serving 10 months in federal prison. If I had gone to court and lost (which I probably would have, since I was selling fireworks without a license, as the law required), I would have probably been sentenced to 7-8 years in prison. So at that point, I no longer felt safe in the United States, I had experienced political persecution. So the day I was allowed to leave the United States, I left immediately.

I was not born a libertarian. I started by chance encountering a book by Ludwig von Mises, and then I read the works of Milton Friedman, David Friedman, and then I found Murray Rothbard's books. Rothbard's work completely changed my outlook on life, and it moved me like music to my ears. I recently heard from Millais in Argentina that Rothbard was also one of the economists who had the greatest influence on him, and I resonated deeply with this. I strongly recommend everyone to read any of Rothbard's works, it will subvert your understanding of the world.

Through these economics books, I learned about the origin of money and how something can be used as money. It must have certain characteristics, such as durability, easy to divide, portable, easy to identify, and difficult to counterfeit, which are necessary conditions for becoming money. I thought these books made sense when I read them, but I really verified these theories after I went to prison.

In prison, everyone uses something as money to buy and sell each other's items. And these "currencies" are usually tobacco, stamps, and instant noodles. If you think about it carefully, these things have the characteristics of being money-easy to carry, durable, easy to identify, and have practical uses: stamps can be used to send letters, instant noodles can be eaten, and tobacco can be smoked. All of this is not stipulated by prison guards or any prisoners, but a naturally formed economic system.

More than ten years later, Bitcoin appeared. At that time, I had both theoretical knowledge and practical experience in prison. So there was no doubt in my mind that people would start using Bitcoin as money. I thought at the time, isn't this every libertarian's dream come true?

Suddenly, we had a choice. I'm not against the dollar, the yen, or the euro, I'm for the right to choose. I think people should be able to choose the form of currency they want to use, whether it's dollars, euros, yen, bitcoin, or other cryptocurrencies, and I hope to see that choice realized.

When Bitcoin came out, the first thing I did was buy a bunch of Bitcoin. At the time, the price of Bitcoin was less than $1. The company I ran, MemoryDealers.com, also became the first mature business in the world to accept Bitcoin payments. We started advertising "Accept Bitcoin Payments", and even though no customers paid with Bitcoin at first, it attracted global media attention. I remember it was in June 2011, when the price of Bitcoin soared from about $3 to $30 in just two or three weeks. This was the first time Bitcoin received such widespread media attention.

Then a funny thing happened. At the time, the main forum for discussing Bitcoin was BitcoinTalk.org. As Bitcoin gained international media coverage, this forum, which had been functioning well, suddenly became flooded with spam posts, full of meaningless comments, and new users were unable to learn about Bitcoin through the forum. Someone was deliberately trying to prevent the spread of Bitcoin during this critical period. As early as 2011, we already knew that the CIA was interested in Bitcoin because they had asked Bitcoin developers about Bitcoin. The CIA had already started studying Bitcoin before most people had heard of it.

At that time, everyone knew that Bitcoin was designed to be a global currency, a peer-to-peer global payment tool. People were paying with Bitcoin, and I used it to pay salaries and overseas suppliers. I even held the first Bitcoin meetup in China and aired ads on national radio to promote Bitcoin, doing my best to spread Bitcoin around the world.

But around 2012, a man calling himself "John Dylan" claimed to be a member of the intelligence agencies and spent over $10,000 (a considerable sum) to create propaganda trying to mislead people into believing that keeping Bitcoin blocks small would make it more decentralized. This was completely contrary to the facts and the original design of Bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto. Bitcoin was not designed or used in this way at the time. At first, no one believed the propaganda.

Then, the Bitcoin community experienced a huge wave of censorship. Some anonymous people took control of all major Bitcoin discussion platforms, and overnight, any speech advocating the use of Bitcoin as a currency was banned. They censored everyone who tried to promote Bitcoin for payments. At first, people could see through these operations, but as new users joined, they were indoctrinated with these censored ideas.

Now the main advocates of Bitcoin are publicly declaring: "Bitcoin should not compete with the dollar, Bitcoin should not be used as a currency, and should not be used for payments." They position Bitcoin as a digital asset that is only used for holding, which is completely deviated from the original purpose of Bitcoin. Through censorship and propaganda, they have completely hijacked Bitcoin. I even wrote a book about it, called "Hijacking Bitcoin", which can be found at HijackingBitcoin.com or Amazon.

I was arrested a few weeks after the book came out and now face 109 years in federal prison for revealing the truth about how Bitcoin was hijacked. You can be optimistic about the "new Bitcoin" being promoted now, but you can't deny that it was hijacked. Fortunately, we now have thousands of different cryptocurrencies. I support competition and have never been an extremist for Bitcoin or any other cryptocurrency. I am a utilitarian libertarian maximalist who seeks technology that provides the greatest utility to the greatest number of people around the world, promotes economic freedom, and drives economic growth, which is what I want to promote.

Bitcoin Becomes the Government's New "Financial Prison"?

Moderator: There are many questions to ask, but let's start with the core promise of Bitcoin. We all remember clearly that the original promise of Bitcoin was to allow people to trade goods and services anonymously and without federal control. It is a digital currency that gives users freedom when making purchases. So how exactly do they control this discussion? You mentioned that they censored the discussion board, can you explain specifically what is going on?

Roger： Of course, censorship started with taking over the discussion platforms. At the time, there were two main discussion platforms where people discussed Bitcoin, one was BitcoinTalk.org and the other was Reddit. The discussions in these two places were very active, and an anonymous person successfully became the administrator or owner of both platforms. Then one day, he began to implement a censorship policy and would ban anyone who made a statement that did not conform to the "Bitcoin Small Block" propaganda.

When the censorship first started, people posted complaints on Reddit. At that time, the post complaining about censorship became the most liked post in the history of r/Bitcoin. As a result, they not only deleted the post, but also banned the people who participated in the discussion. And this censorship continues to this day. If you post anything on r/Bitcoin or BitcoinTalk.org now that supports "Bitcoin expansion and use for global payments", they will directly block your account.

Now many people involved in Bitcoin only focus on the price, such as "Bitcoin is now close to $100,000 a coin", or listen to Michael Saylor saying "Pay taxes, don't be provocative, don't compete with the US dollar, otherwise you will anger Visa, MasterCard and the government." These remarks completely deviate from the original spirit of Bitcoin. At that time, everyone was talking about "Bitcoin finally allows people to choose the currency they want to use."

Imagine if people used Bitcoin to get paid, shop, and pay for everything, how could the US government send billions of dollars to Ukraine? How could they invest huge amounts of money in wars that most people don't support? They wouldn't be able to create money out of thin air to do all this, as they do now.

What did you learn in school? "Government is for the people." But if people were using hard assets like cryptocurrencies in their daily lives, the government would have to be more accountable to the people than it is now, and this is exactly why the government doesn't want that to happen.

So the government has been trying to prevent Bitcoin from developing and prevent people from using cryptocurrencies as money in their daily lives, whether it's through tax policies, tax reporting, exit taxes, or whatever, they are making it as difficult as possible. In fact, when I was recording the show, I offered to pay people in cryptocurrency, but they didn't want to accept it because they were worried about the tax consequences. The government is worried about losing control of the money supply, and if you lose control, you lose most of the control of society.

If you believe in individual rights and freedoms, and that everyone should be in control of their own destiny, then it's a wonderful thing when governments lose their ability to control people's lives.

That's why I'm so excited about Bitcoin, and I've been involved in promoting cryptocurrency as a global people's currency for almost 15 years, whether you're in Spain awaiting extradition, or in the United States, or anywhere in the world. Cryptocurrency belongs to everyone, and it needs to compete with the dollar, the euro, the yen, the ruble, and all the other currencies.

Because when people have more choices, their lives are better, which leads to more economic freedom, which leads to more economic growth, and economic growth raises everyone's living standards, which actually makes life better for everyone on the planet. That's why I'm so excited to be involved, even though I'm at risk of a possible 109 years in federal prison, just for telling you about these exciting ideas and technologies.

Host: So Bitcoin's original promise was to make you free, but through disruption, it quickly became making you rich, and that change was enough to derail the original promise. I should mention that you did become wealthy because of Bitcoin. You could have chosen to say nothing and sit back and enjoy your Bitcoin wealth because you bought a lot of Bitcoin early on, and it sounds like your ideological commitments overwhelmed your financial interests.

Roger: It was nothing to me, I was a millionaire before Bitcoin. I had my own tech company in Silicon Valley and it was doing well. A lot of people talk about "when can I buy a Lamborghini", they say I'm going to sell my Bitcoin to buy Lamborghinis, and I owned multiple Lamborghinis before Bitcoin came out. When Bitcoin came out, I believed in Bitcoin so firmly that I sold my Lamborghinis to buy more Bitcoin. That's how passionate I was about it, philosophically, emotionally, intellectually, because it really is one of the best tools in the world to give individuals more control over their lives. So, my direction was completely opposite to most people involved in Bitcoin today. I was selling things to buy Bitcoin because I knew it would become the global currency. Today, it might be Bitcoin, it might be other cryptocurrencies, but cryptocurrencies are definitely the trend of the future, and remember today is 2024.

When Bitcoin first came out, there was no Apple Pay, there was no Zell, these things barely existed, there was almost no competition. But governments have successfully delayed the adoption of cryptocurrencies, and now the traditional financial system suddenly has a chance to catch up and achieve more.

It's really frustrating because life is short. Every year goes by faster and faster, and each of us has less and less time left in our lives. We need to enjoy the benefits of cryptocurrencies as soon as possible, and we need to get these benefits to the world as soon as possible. Don't waste time, and this is exactly what governments around the world have been doing. They have been delaying and hindering the adoption of cryptocurrencies as money, which is actually delaying the progress of the entire human race and human society, and it's really frustrating to see this happen.

Moderator: From my perspective, the most frustrating part is that it is obvious that you can't do any private transactions with cryptocurrencies now, which is the core promise. I made this money, I didn't do anything wrong, I want to buy something, and no one should know whether I bought it or not. I want to do this in privacy, and I don't think it's strange, it's human nature. So is it possible to do any kind of transaction anonymously with cryptocurrency now?

Roger:Initially everyone thought that Bitcoin was basically anonymous, and that's what everyone used. Then some websites started selling things that the government probably didn't want you to buy, and people bought them with Bitcoin because they thought Bitcoin was basically anonymous. Then we found out that Bitcoin is not anonymous at all.

Today, most people use a custodial wallet, which is not really a wallet at all, it's just an account, and it's no more private than your account at Bank of America or Paypal. In fact, it's less private than that because anyone can look at the blockchain and see what's in it. But fortunately, there are other cryptocurrencies that offer more privacy. For example, Monero, most people use this if they want privacy.

But in fact, there are more exciting technologies and coins, such as a project called Zeno, which allows anyone to create their own privacy tokens and not let the outside world see any transactions at all. If you really want to piss off the government or the big three intelligence agencies, there is also a project called Confidential Layer that is building a bridge that connects Bitcoin Cash and Ethereum to Zeno. This way you can bridge your non-privacy Bitcoin or Ethereum to the Zeno platform non-custodially and with no central point of administration, and once on Zeno you have very strong privacy.

I think this will bring more privacy to the entire cryptocurrency ecosystem, but governments will definitely hate this. Things like Monero, which I mentioned earlier, are currently pre-banned from being listed on exchanges in most parts of the world, simply because governments can't easily monitor users of Monero or Zeno like they can other cryptocurrencies. So I'm a big proponent of privacy-preserving coins like Monero or Zeno right now.

In fact, I'm embarrassed to promote Bitcoin to anyone right now because it's slow, expensive, unreliable, and has no privacy. I'd rather promote privacy tools like Monero, Zeno, ZCash, etc. because they give people more personal control, privacy, and economic freedom.

Now a lot of people say Bitcoin is free money, but I really worry that they're actually building the walls of a financial prison for themselves. If you look at what's happening in El Salvador, everyone is excited about Bitcoin circulating there, but they're all using escrow accounts where the government can see every transaction and can freeze accounts at any time, which is not economic freedom at all, but government control of the economy. So anyone who's concerned about these issues should be very worried and should support cryptocurrencies that truly give individuals control over their own money and their own lives.

I think it's possible that Bitcoin will become more private through this technology called the Confidential Layer, bridged to Zeno, but who can be sure now? We need to be very careful because we may be building the walls of a financial prison without even realizing it, and once we realize it, it may be too late to escape. So today we have to be vigilant and stay awake.
Host: There are a lot of people in the cryptocurrency space who are worthy of admiration, and I am friends with some of them. The people you mentioned, I actually like and agree with. What confuses me a little bit is why I am the only one saying these things? Why don't those who promote various cryptocurrencies issue warnings that every transaction we make with these currencies is not private and can actually be easily tracked by the government? Why is no one saying this?

Roger: Because censorship and propaganda have played a role, and many people actually say this, but apart from me, there are almost no people with a big enough platform or a big enough voice to attract enough attention. Because I have such a big platform and voice, and suddenly I am facing 109 years in prison, I don't think this is purely coincidental.

If the solution to some opinions or speech that you disagree with is more debate, discussion and free speech, then the opposite approach is censorship and propaganda. And now many people who promote Bitcoin have supported this censorship and propaganda. I am completely on the side of free speech. When the debate over Bitcoin's scaling solution began, I was leaning towards the so-called big block solution, but I wanted to keep an open mind to listen to other opinions. So I kept silent and started listening. However, as I listened, suddenly one side began to try to suppress the voice of the other side. I know which side I am on, and I am on the side of free speech.

So when that side began to censor the other side, I knew it was time to speak out. I support Bitcoin being able to scale in the original way - as written in the Bitcoin white paper, becoming peer-to-peer cash for the whole world, which is completely different from what everyone calls a speculative asset today.

Bitcoin is approaching $100,000 right now, and maybe it should have been $100,000 five years ago, but it has been hijacked and taken away from its original purpose as global cash. What we see today is that it's approaching $100,000, but what we don't see is what it could have become if big companies like Microsoft and Expedia hadn't stopped accepting Bitcoin because of its slow transactions, high fees, unstable transactions, and lack of privacy. So that's really disappointing.

Thank you for giving me this platform to sound the alarm. I don't want to see the whole world end up trapped in some kind of financial prison, even if it sounds cool, like Bitcoin.
Host:Who is Satoshi?

Roger: I don't know, and if anyone knows, I don't know. But whoever he was and where he was, he or they, or even she, invented one of the most important technologies in human history, as important as electricity, the transistor, and the Internet. It really is a world-changing technology. So, whoever he is and wherever he is, they deserve privacy because that's what they clearly want.

Host:So it doesn't sound like you doubt that Bitcoin was created by intelligence agencies and used as a trap for people?

Roger: I don't think Bitcoin was created by intelligence agencies at first, but I do have some suspicions that intelligence agencies and other groups have turned it around and hijacked it into a financial trap.

"I live every day like it's my last": Roger's current life under house arrest

Host:I think you explained it so well, no wonder they want to put you in jail. I shouldn't laugh, it's actually a scary thing, because they really want to put you in jail. So, I'm more curious, do you think you're really going to go to jail? Is there any way to prevent this?

Roger: There are a lot of ways to stop this, but I think the most effective way is to get the public to speak up. The more people that speak up, the safer everyone is. So, one of the most outrageous things was that the IRS came into my law firm and my accounting firm with guns, and they actually raided my lawyer's office. And in the United States, you have the right to communicate with your lawyer and maintain privacy. This information can be found on a website called Free Roger Now, which supporters set up for this purpose.

They recently filed a document called a Motion to Dismiss, and you can see for yourself that the U.S. government lied in the indictment. The evidence is in the emails between me and my lawyer, go see it for yourself, don’t just take my word for it, make sure you read the Motion to Dismiss.

They lied in the Spanish courts, and they lied everywhere, because they don’t want the world to know the truth about cryptocurrencies — that they can be used to empower individuals, give people control over their lives, and outrank politicians who have never met you, don’t know your life, and most of whom don’t care about you.

So now people around the world can use cryptocurrencies, and they can use it to escape inflation, or escape other oppressive measures. Cryptocurrencies are a great tool for global freedom, and governments are the antithesis of freedom.

They don’t like people having more freedom, which is why they don’t like cryptocurrencies, and that’s why they’re trying to silence me. I wish I had more hard evidence, but I don’t think my arrest and jail time happened by accident. When my book was published and I was about to start a big media tour to spread the word that Bitcoin had been hijacked, they suddenly arrested me and put me in jail in Barcelona for a whole month. They were furious that I was out on bail, but this was my first media interview in six months since I got out of jail.

This is a big story for the whole world, this is not just an American problem, this actually affects everyone on the planet. Just like Apple, people all over the world use iPhones, Apple is an American company, but it affects everyone on the planet. Every year when a new Apple product comes out, people all over the world, whether they are Americans or elsewhere, benefit. Americans benefit too, everyone benefits. The same is true for cryptocurrencies, everyone on the planet, whether they work in the United States, Spain or elsewhere, benefits.

By benefit, I mean people have more control over their lives, their finances, and their financial sovereignty. Governments hate this, which is why they want to stop it and why they don't want you to read the book Hijacking Bitcoin. You can find strong evidence in the book about how Bitcoin was hijacked, and that those who promote Bitcoin today are actually doing the exact opposite of its original goal.

Host:I'm a little surprised as to why the Spanish government would approve the US extradition request. The US government just gave Ukraine $100 billion without an audit, the most corrupt country in Europe, $100 billion, and it wasn't even audited. We know a lot of that money was stolen, but they don't care. So, since you're not a US citizen and don't live in the US, it's ridiculous that the US government would be so angry and accuse you of not paying US taxes. How could the Spanish government be involved in this obvious miscarriage of justice? Why would they cooperate?

Roger: I can say no, not only because they are angry, but the point is that I am not a US citizen and I do not live in the US. It is completely crazy that they are claiming that I owe US taxes on Bitcoin transactions.

When you see political persecution, you will find that they often make up things to catch their targets. And the most common way they do it is to use the government's tax code because it is so complicated that it is difficult to understand. Even for professionals who want to follow every detail, I have experienced it myself, it is too complicated. If they really want to catch you, they will find a way. This is what they do time and time again.

Regarding the Spanish government, I have a very good lawyer here, Jaime. He is very optimistic that he can successfully handle this, but you can never be sure, and it is really unsettling to live in this fear.

If I win and Spain decides not to extradite me, they will send me or my lawyer a letter saying "Congratulations, you are not extradited." But if I lose and they decide to extradite me, they won't tell me in advance.

Someone could knock on my door that morning and take me away and put me in jail without any notice. Can't return my rental car, can't tell my landlord, can't do anything. They will just take me away and I won't know when it will happen. It's really hard to live with the feeling of worrying every day whether this will be the last day I'm not in jail, and then I can't get out of jail for the rest of my life.

Still, I am cautiously optimistic that Spain will see through this and understand that this is just a political witch hunt by a group of jealous people. If I hadn't been treated so unfairly the last time I ran for political office and tried to change the system, I might still be a proud American citizen.

I am still full of the most American values in my heart, and if you think about it, people always say "you gave up your American citizenship and you are not patriotic", which is not true at all! These are the core values of the founding of the United States. At that time, it was a group of British people who were dissatisfied with British law who gave up their citizenship and decided to say "I don't want to join you anymore." So, giving up citizenship is actually one of the most American actions.

I hope the Spanish government can understand that I have been promoting the benefits of cryptocurrency to the world, and the US government is most worried about the status of the US dollar as the global reserve currency. Therefore, the United States is even more averse to cryptocurrency than other governments. This is obviously a politically motivated persecution.

I have confidence and hope in the Spanish government's decision not to extradite me. I hope they can make the right judgment and see the truth of the matter. But I also know that I may win the whole case at trial, but who knows? Even if I am completely innocent, things are always full of variables.

Maybe the Justice Department will choose to drop all charges because it is totally baseless. We have fought the Supreme Court for my attorney-client privacy. When they finally get the documents, they may be disappointed because in the documents I just told my lawyer to do everything perfectly and make sure there is no problem. So this involves a Supreme Court case. What people need to understand is that the IRS raided my tax law firm and violated attorney-client privilege. How can you raid a law firm and violate attorney-client privilege in the United States? This is what American propaganda has been telling you about in Russia and other countries, but it happened in the United States.

So, President Biden can do the right thing. He recently pardoned his own son, and he can also issue a preventive pardon for me. If Trump is re-elected, he can understand this because he has experienced being a victim of legal battles. I believe he can see this and issue pardons for me and many other people who deserve pardons. I am not the only one, in fact, many people have been persecuted at the dislike of the American regime. If you challenge the deep state, they will come after you, and I am just another target on that long list of people who are trying to destroy our lives.

Host:If I wasn't in this business, I wouldn't believe any of this. I would think that none of what you say is true, but I've seen it so many times. In terms of specific questions, can you leave Spain now? Are you imprisoned in Spain?

Roger: I can't leave the country, I'm confined to a small island in Spain called Mallorca, far away from the mainland of Spain. I can't even leave the island, I can't take a boat out, I can't do anything. Every 48 hours, I have to report to the court and show my identity to prove that I'm not a runaway. And any day could be my last day, if they decide to extradite me, they can come without warning, arrest me in Spain, and then possibly send me to a prison in the United States. So it's a very nervous lifestyle, worrying every day whether I'm going to be arrested today. Spain is a great country and I love it here, but it would be even better if I could stay here voluntarily.

Host: You have already spent a month in a Spanish prison, what was that like?

Roger: My Spanish is much better than before, and because I have always been a very fresh and articulate person, several other people in the prison began to suspect that I might be an undercover American who was specifically here to monitor the prison. So some of the prisoners were very wary of me and didn't want to talk to me. Fortunately, no one found out who I really was and no one knew about my relationship with cryptocurrency. However, some people did doubt me very much, and I was relieved to finally get out.

The U.S. government was pissed that Spain had given me bail, and they wanted me to stay in a Spanish jail until everything was sorted out. You know, I didn't spend a lot of time in Spain, even my second time there, and I thought I would only be there for four days. I was attending a crypto conference about privacy coins, projects like Zeno, Monero, and the like. I was in the hotel lobby, and after the conference, a guy I didn't know came up to me with a thick Spanish accent and asked if I was Roger Ver. I said "yes", and then he asked me three or four more times until I was completely sure he was asking me.

At first I thought he was from the crypto community and wanted to chat with me, maybe get my book signed or discuss crypto or something. But then he pulled out his ID, told me he had an Interpol arrest warrant, and then arrested me in the hotel lobby and sent me straight to the Spanish jail. Wow, I didn't expect this at all, but it made me more determined because crypto is a powerful empowering tool for everyone. How could I keep silent about this good news, how important it is to spread the popularity of cryptocurrency to the world. So, congratulations to you America, you make me more motivated to bring cryptocurrency to the world.

「Original link」