Roger Ver, a pioneer of Bitcoin Cash (BCH) and an early crypto enthusiast, claims that the U.S. government tried to undermine Bitcoin (BTC) as early as 2011.
In a recent chat with Tucker Carlson, Ver pointed out that Bitcointalk.org, an early forum for Bitcoin, was swamped with bots during the week Bitcoin first caught global media attention.
He said, “Somebody out there literally made the forum unusable as early as 2011. Around that same time, we know the CIA was interested in Bitcoin. They were asking various Bitcoin developers, ‘Hey, can you explain Bitcoin to us?’ So, back then, when most of the world hadn’t even heard of Bitcoin, the CIA was already looking into it. Someone was actively preventing it from spreading quickly by shutting down the forum when many new people were trying to learn about it for the first time.”
Ver, who invested in Bitcoin early on before supporting the BCH fork, believes that propaganda, possibly from U.S. intelligence agencies, was spread to convince people that keeping BTC block sizes small was crucial.
He was a vocal advocate for larger block sizes during the Bitcoin Blocksize War, arguing that increasing BTC block sizes would lead to cheaper and faster transactions. On the other hand, “small blockers,” like Blockstream CEO Adam Back, maintained that Bitcoin’s original 1MB block size was essential for keeping the network decentralized.
In late April, Ver was arrested in Spain at the request of the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ). He faces multiple charges, including mail fraud, tax evasion, and filing false tax returns.
Even though he renounced his U.S. citizenship in 2014 after obtaining citizenship in Saint Kitts and Nevis, authorities claim that Ver should have filed tax returns reporting capital gains from selling his global assets, including Bitcoin, and disclosed the fair market value of those assets.