U.Today - Roger Ver, the online entrepreneur known as Bitcoin Jesus in the past, has given an online interview to U.S. journalist Tucker Carlson, and the latter published it on his X account on Tuesday.
In this interview, Roger Ver shared his version as to why he was arrested in Spain half a year ago and his view of what Bitcoin has turned into by now. He also answered Carlson’s question about who Satoshi Nakamoto, the mysterious founder of Bitcoin, was.
As reported by U.Today, on April 30, Roger Ver was taken in custody in Spain at the demand of the U.S. Department of Justice on charges of committing tax evasion and causing a loss of “at least $48 million” to the U.S. Internal Revenue Service.
Ver claims he knows real reason for his arrest, and it is not taxes
At the beginning of the interview, Tucker Carlson said outright that he does not believe in the “tax evasion” reason when famous figures get arrested outside of the United States. He asked Ver if there might be another reason why the U.S. government would want to put him in prison until the end of this life – for 109 years.Ver believes that his arrest is not related to taxes but rather to his support of Bitcoin in the crypto’s earliest days – and with his current claims that Bitcoin does not give people any privacy in their purchasing power.
Ver says he knew that this sort of action could be dangerous, so in 2014, he dropped his U.S. citizenship and became a citizen of Saint Kitts and Nevis in the Caribbean through its investment program.
Ver said that his arrest took place a decade after he renounced his U.S. citizenship and just a couple of months after his book “Hijacking Bitcoin” came out, in which he shared his belief that Bitcoin now is not what Satoshi Nakamoto had in mind when he created it.
"Who is Satoshi?" Ver responds
When Carlson asked Roger Ver who Satoshi is, Bitcoin Jesus said that he does not know and believes that nobody in the world really does.But whoever he or she is, per Ver, they invented “one of the most important things in the entire history of human kind,” likening Bitcoin in importance to electricity, the transistor and the internet.