Towards the tip of our hour-long interview, Bitcoin.com founder Roger Ver drops a bombshell: He had thought-about killing himself to flee a jail se
Towards the tip of our hour-long interview, Bitcoin.com founder Roger Ver drops a bombshell: He had thought-about killing himself to flee a jail sentence on the age of 23. Even for probably the most freedom-loving libertarian, this appears excessive. However Ver had labored out a strategy to escape his personal dying by having himself cryonically preserved, to be revived at a later date.
At 20 years previous, Ver had already signed up with Arizona life extension firm Alcor to be frozen after dying, lengthy earlier than he was handed a 10-month jail stretch in 2002 for promoting firecrackers on eBay.
“It’ll freeze your physique in an enormous big vat of liquid nitrogen once you die, within the hopes that future medical expertise will have the ability to repair no matter it’s that triggered you to die within the first place — plus the harm attributable to freezing,” he explains:
“And so in reality, I even thought-about — suicide isn’t the precise phrase — however I thought-about killing myself briefly, going into cryonic suspension after which popping out later, when the expertise is best, to keep away from going to jail. That’s how upset I used to be about going to jail.”
Now 42, and with a fortune he vaguely refers to as being within the billions, the Bitcoin Money proponent intends to modify his funding focus to cryonics over the following decade, within the hopes of bettering the experimental expertise.
“Moderately than investing in cryptocurrency stuff, I need to deal with the intense life extension applied sciences as a result of should you die, you possibly can’t get pleasure from your life anymore,” he says. At varied factors throughout our dialog, Ver refers to his mission with a well-rehearsed tagline about serving to construct the instruments to provide folks management over their very own cash (or variations thereof).
Riffing on this, he says his new focus might be to “construct the instruments that allow folks to have as a lot time as they want of their lives to do the issues that they get pleasure from, and spend it with the folks they care about.”
If Ver will get run over by a bus tomorrow, there’s a card in his pockets and notes on his cellphone with directions to right away get in contact with Alcor to freeze his physique, with the hope of eventual resurrection. “That’s definitely my hope,” he says, including wryly, “The draw back of that’s that the corporate’s in Arizona, and I’m zipping everywhere in the world.”
Paradise within the pandemic
Ver is at present bunkering down from the pandemic on the French-speaking island of St. Barts within the Caribbean, the place it’s “summer time all 12 months spherical.” Following his run-in with United States authorities, he renounced his U.S. citizenship in 2014 and have become a citizen of St. Kitts and Nevis. He spends plenty of time in neighboring Antigua, the place he satisfied companies from fuel stations to supermarkets to just accept BCH. Now you can even pay the $158,000 required to develop into a citizen in crypto.
In contrast with 2017 and 2018, when Ver gave the impression to be in all places arguing the case for giant blocks and peer-to-peer money, he’s been quite a bit much less distinguished currently. “I completely made a deliberate determination to do much less media stuff,” he says. “That civil struggle is sort of over now. So, I don’t assume I have to argue with phrases a lot as construct helpful issues for folks all over the world to make use of.”
He’s nonetheless fairly energetic behind the scenes although, taking part in an instrumental position in convincing Kim Dotcom to embrace Bitcoin Money for his Ok.im content material monetization platform.
Talking to Bitcoin maximalist Tone Vays (who was decidedly unimpressed), Dotcom revealed that Ver had received him over. “He shared with me a few of the improvements that he’s engaged on. I feel the man for the time being, when it comes to his mind-set and the place he’s in his innovation, is a step forward. I really feel it might be silly to disregard somebody like that.”
Apparently Ver might have additionally extolled the virtues of Bitcoin Money to Tesla CEO Elon Musk, however he’s reluctant to substantiate this.
“I hate to be coy, however I’m not going to touch upon that query. I’m blissful to speak about nearly the whole lot, however that’s one which I feel we’ll have to avoid wasting for one more time.”
Effectively, that’s not a “No,” is it?
Elon Musk and Kim Dotcom discuss Bitcoin Money low charges!! Does Bitcoin excessive transaction charges matter? #bitcoin #BitcoinCash @elonmusk @KimDotcom https://t.co/BbeVkDbUUl pic.twitter.com/UkvLapITD4
— Ryan Giffin (@RyanMic87079594) March 29, 2021
The one little bit of the story about Bitcoin forks
As one of many earliest and most ardent Bitcoin proponents, Ver can also be one of the controversial for his position in forking Bitcoin Money away in November 2017. Whereas BCH’s value and hash fee pale into insignificance in opposition to Bitcoin, as of late, the community’s transaction rely is 100,000 extra per day than Bitcoin’s, and its block measurement is bigger too, suggesting it could truly be beginning for use as a foreign money.
However forks spawn forks, and the once-ally and Satoshi-claimant Craig Wright forked Bitcoin SV away from Bitcoin Money a 12 months later. At one level, Ver appeared to provide some credence to Wright’s…