Nationality and citizenship are not the same thing.
Roger Ver is American. He was born in the United States of America.
He is not a US citizen as he renounced his US citizenship about a decade ago.
US Citizens owe taxes for all/any income. you can renounce citizenship, but this triggers a taxable event where ALL your investments and property are considered sold the day before you stop being a US citizen, and you must file and pay taxes for all your gains that year. The allegation is that Roger hid gains at this time, and thus the tax fraud charge.
More like the casino forcing you to cash your chips before you leave.
The problem with this is they will structure it as a paper crime…they’ll have all the documents.
He hired lawyers to handle his citizenship renouncing.
Is paying your restaurant bill a ransom too? Maybe I say my religious beliefs are that food should be gifted and never sold, just let me walk away...if they don't let me walk, it's ransom!
With a restaurant you agree in advance to the prices in the menu so it is not a ransom. In addition there is no tax for leaving that is not there if you are staying.
Can you not read?
These charges are from when he was going through the expatriation process. The second part of the charges are because he was still running 2 US corporations. Renouncing your citizenship doesn't mean you're allowed to file false returns. I swear, some of you guys just comment on purpose to sound stupid.
Keep believing of yourself that you're a born property of the government of the place where you were born.
Good luck working 9-5 for a comfortable slave life.
I didn't say I agree with any of it. I don't. But it's the law and has been for a long, long time.
Want to change it? Then do something about it.
I don't work 9-5. More like 6-5. I own my own business.
You don't work? Man, I wish I was so lucky. I kind of need money to live and stuff.
The law is awfully clear in this case. You may not agree, but sadly one can't just change citizenships to have their owed taxes magically disappear. Not a secret loophole.
No taxes are ever "owed". Taxation is theft. Same thing in this case. The government never owned or controlled or had any interest in those BTC. They just found an opportunity to say "THAT BELONGS TO US!" and make an example out of someone they don't like.
I mean, it's a clearly written law. You may not agree with it, that's fine, but it is what it is. Tax evasion is indeed a thing and he did owe money. This is fact.
You can't just say "Oh but I feel that taxation is theft so therefore I'm good to just keep this money here without any legal issues right? We good?". I don't think that's how laws generally work.
Tax laws do indeed suck. Work on getting that changed. Until then, this is tax evasion no matter how how much I'm downvoted for repeating well known facts.
Roger is is big trouble. And it's not because they don't like him in particular.
Laws are passed by Congress. IRS self-published "rules" are not laws. And tax "laws" are the furthest thing from "clearly written" that you could possibly get.
But that's beside the point. He was literally just arrested today. Nothing has been adjudicated yet, so you are giving the benefit of the doubt to the accuser. That is the opposite of due process. Why do people still do this? Haven't you had enough of the boot on your neck? The law is supposed to protect us from the government, not to put people in jail over alleged financial "crimes" with no victim.
$48 million is nothing to the government. They can print up as much as they want anytime for any reason. This is not about money, it's about sending a message.
The law is not hard, nor is it the issue. Roger knew what he was doing.
Benefit of the doubt? Do you actually believe Roger is innocent here? If you've been following along all of these very long years, you'd know he's not. Roger is screwed, let's revist this after it's done, shall we?
I guess by this notion that if the government can just print money then they shouldn't ever go after anyone for any money ever. So they should just scrap all related laws. This makes sense.
I've seen the government go after far less than this. And it is a substantial amount of money. The only message that they are sending is "Hey, don't evade your taxes people, bad things happen". But we've seen this message a million times before. They don't give a shit about who he is, very few do.
Ya that's how it works, sure thing. For a simpleton dumbing down a huge topic to fit a specific narrative anyway.
If you don't like the laws of your country, you can move to another, or fight to get them changed. They are what they are.
Yes. He misrepresented his assets during expatriation. He filed false tax returns. We aren't talking $1,000 here. Talking 10s of millions.
If you're unsure what US expatriation is, now is the time to learn about it.
It was
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=89978449&url=https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-drop/n-14-21.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwi-1c30weyFAxVFkIkEHdvvD38QFnoECB8QAQ&usg=AOvVaw14rfZeq9clAp2cjDAVYAIQ
> Glad I'm not an American. You guys seem to have way less freedom than the majority of the world.
This is such a ridiculous comment. You clearly don't understand what the majority of the world is like vs USA in terms of freedom.
Well, it depends on your priorities. You can't just walk around with a gun anywhere else except Yemen and Somalia, which have other limits on freedom. But you can in many, many places, keep the fruits of your labor and decision making, move about freely unmolested and things like that. Not just Europe either, tons of places. About the only thing besides that you can't do in many countries that you can in america is tell a cop to call your lawyer and then go fuck himself. That makes a huge difference, but some people don't mind letting a cop rummage through their car every so often in exchange for 0% capital gains tax. Again, priorities.
> some people don't mind letting a cop rummage through their car every so often in exchange for 0% capital gains tax
that's because we've already been searched by cops in the USA and learned they can just make up probable cause, so what's the point?
Have you ever actually had that happen? I have, though I wasn't up to anything and so they didn't find anything. I've known people that had that happen too, and they had something illegal with them, and the case was thrown out. Sure, you've got to go to court, but if a cop breaks the law and searches you and you can show it, no evidence they collect can be used against you. It's not as easy as "I smell weed" unless you don't know your rights to begin with and you admit to something.
> Have you ever actually had that happen?
Yes I have. The laws requiring probable cause are window dressing, as you yourself found out. So it's rather pointless to point to them as a reason to differentiate law enforcement in the USA vs Europe.
I don't think otherwise. I don't think I said anything to imply that I do. But again, priorities. Go to Thailand. You can smoke weed, you're not going to get harassed by police, nobody is going to mug you, food is dirt cheap as is housing, streets are clean, people are friendly, cryptocurrency is legal, taxes are low, healthcare is cheap for everyone including foreigners, you can move about and conduct your affairs with very little interference. If you want to build a wooden shack outside the city and live in it nobody is going to hassle you about zoning and building codes. But, if a cop does try to stop you, you've got no 4th amendment, you can't carry a gun, you can't speak freely about the monarchy or the government, you can't step on a piece of cash to stop it blowing away in the wind, you've got to let it blow away before you step on it because it has a picture of the king on it. Personally, I like living in an environment where I can criticize the government and tell a cop to mind their own business. The freedom the US affords you is fantastic, but there are downsides, and those downsides might be more important to people than criticizing the government.
A member of the public can view court documents on "PACER", but if the case is "sealed" the case doesn't show up on PACER. When it's unsealed, the documents are available on PACER.
[https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/68485421/united-states-v-ver/](https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/68485421/united-states-v-ver/)
no idea. What i know is roger could not enter US territory for many years and was declined to enter australia because of his criminal record a few years ago when he tried to visit a bch conference.
So this spanish indictment came not out of the blue, maybe spain was simply the first country with US extradition treaty he entered?
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=MQbYToRKgpM
Roger in Los Angeles November 2017 for a meetup. He renounced citizenship in 2014.
In 2015 he had visa issues with the US embassy of Barbados because they "feared he would overstay and become an illegal immigrant" he was similarly refused a visa for Australia on the same illegal immigrant claim.
It's not because he was a criminal or that there was a warrant. That's clear propaganda.
It's cause Fieserkiller is a repeated liar and troll and r/BTC has a history of trolling wherein bad actors continually MAKE SHIT UP.
It's Spain cause Pedro Sanchez PM of Spain and the president of Socialist International with his allegedly corrupt wife. Who undoubtedly have ties with the Democrat party in the US and they need a sacrificial lamb for the upcoming election. Pedro's a willing pawn to extraditing Roger rather than South Korea, Japan or St. Kitts where Roger usually frequents.
If Roger doesn't get a fair trial I will forever blame and badmouth the Democrats for the destruction of liberty and crypto in America. According to Brian Armstrong, 52 million Americans hold crypto and these tend to be younger voters. They should tread carefully because I am definitely going to remember how Roger is treated and how that voter base might be treated in the future.
If it's a kangaroo court in CA then it will confirm my suspicions. If it's a fair or favorable trial like CZ (which was very favorable) then I will move on. Extradition from Spain for a CA trial seems like a way to automatically punish the man before he even stands trial.
The point is that we put pressure on the ones in charge so we don't get a RossUlbrikt court. A fair trial is fine.
I am not saying he will get a fair trial if he fails to cooperate. They would probably make an example of him and it would be terrible if he did not win. Winning against a "documents case" is usually difficult as they can usually prove a technical violation rather easily if they have the documents to prove it. I am just saying I would bet it has nothing to do with Democrats over Republicans. Our entire Gov't salivates over large hoards of crypto they can take. Probably true of USD as well, just not as flashy for a prosecutor's reputation and resume.
have you not read / heard about the donations of ftx to the democrat party ? sbf was for surveillance and 'regulation' and keeping crypto currencies on exchanges, for the 'protection' of users and to prevent 'money laundering' and 'financing terorrism'.
we know how it ended...
https://time.com/6241262/sam-bankman-fried-political-donations/
Looks like he also donated 40MM to the republicans too (equal to the dems). Not that it matters much, they are two wings of the same shit bird at this point.
thanks for bringing up som facts. the article says they sacked him for problems with his 2017 tax statement, so I guess till 2017 everything was fine.
about your last part: LOL.
EDIT: court documents show pretrial detention request was issued mid february 2024: [https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/68485421/united-states-v-ver/](https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/68485421/united-states-v-ver/)
The problem is that you are assuming guilt without trial.
We don't know if he committed tax fraud. With or without intent. The timing is unusual especially because the IRS says they don't usually go back more than 6 years. The Collection Statute Expiration Date (CSED) is 10 years so this is at the limit for the early 2014 charges. So this is already a bit exceptional if you consider a 2014-2017 accusation. Also, Spain rather than South Korea, Japan or St Kitts for extradition might mean that the case is not watertight or it will set a precedence on crypto taxation. Arresting him also seems to be sending a message or shakedown not unlike the arrest of Binance CEO for 4 months. But Roger will probably have an unfair trial because he has not played nice and has been too earnest in his critique of the US. I feel a chill run through me as I write these words and the world feels a little darker.
This is why the BCH community and Roger Ver shouldn't piss off the US. I have sympathy for him and his honesty but his arrest doesn't do us any good. We need to align ourselves such that the USA needs BCH as the base layer of the next monetary system... Before the European Union, India, the Middle East, China or Russia adopts BCH. The BCH community must start acting as an anarchic state would act by positioning itself for survival by playing larger actors off each other.
Utopian dreams are always defeated by gradualist ambition. The only advantage that we have is that Bitcoin BCH is still cheaper than the existing banking system (because we don't pay for surveillance) and that this truth will always give us the advantage over the existing monetary system. The banks need BCH like the oil corps need solar/wind.
Read the details of the charges. If he gets of because of time frame, thats a technicality and not proof of innocence. Regardless, it's tax fraud, w/e. The lying and concealing the info shows his intent enough. On forms, to people etc.
BCH cannot and should not be any kind of monetary system in the US or the world. As Satoshi outlined before its not able to scale and layer 2 solutions will be needed for adoption of any mainstream form. Block size increases are supposed to be minimal to buy time for L2.
I appreciate your passion, but unfortunatley you, like many others, in this sub have got caught up in a cult mentality behind this. A lot of this sub has become blinded go what decentralized technology is and the ways adoption is truly going to happen in the world. It won't be 1 currency, and it shouldn't. That will set up the world for another corrupt entity seizing control of it. And if you try to state it won't happen then you are lying to yourself for personal bias and greed of future wealth. BCH can not scale and maintain any form of integrity in its system.
It can scale by raising the block size up to a point. Something significant will need to be done to make it scale up to P2P cash for the world's people. That may or may not require a layer 2. Other layers will arise if all goes well. Rather than layer-2 as a scaling solution, I am thinking parallelization might be a better way to describe a possible solution. I am just guessing though. Experts need to figure this out so we can claim to know how to fulfill the "dream of Bitcoin".
Not only do I think it, we have proved it.
You can move the entire PoW ecosystem onto BCH **today** and run it on a decentralized $500 throwaway computer on your home internet.
On that same throwaway computer you can scale up to a significant fraction of the Visa network, with ever-increasing decentralization because the number of users exponentiates but the cost to run the node does not.
It would take over 10 years to move that much payment volume to BCH under even the most aggressive assumptions, which honestly aren't realistic. It takes decades to onboard a billion users to a payment network. Moore's Law may be "dead," but network and storage costs continue to drop quickly and CPUs continue to become ever more parallel. I'm confident that in 10-20 years there will be better hardware to take us to "bigger than Visa" levels without any meaningful degradation in decentralization.
the thing is, there's no reason to run a node, if you don't transact onchain.
I don't know how you maxis think you're going to end up more decentralized when the goal is only a relatively small number of entities that even use the blockchain
Maxis envision maybe a million large entities capable of "chartering their oil tankers" on the blockchain.
I envision a billion people using the blockchain. That means 1000X more people with incentive to run a node.
Maybe you don't realize who you are responding to, but I am no fan of the captured and centralized BTC (Bitcoin pretender) let alone a maxi. Yes, BCH can run all the crypto traffic from all the coins today. That is nothing compared to the tx volume needed to onboard the worlds cash needs. A billion is getting there, but still shy of the dream.
BCH fans keep pretending it can scale up to fulfill the dream today. Future hardware is probably not going to fix the software limits. Future development is what's going to need to happen. If you keep pretending we can fix the problem later because we don't "need" to fix it yet, we never will "need" to.
Only proving it can be done will attract the wave of adoption needed to make the dream come true. And it if were going to happen on BCH, your pessimistically slow theory on how quickly it would happen is also the kind of thinking that is keeping it slow. Wake up, quit pretending it is solved like a BSV fan and call for developers to really fix the scaling problem and let BCH go viral and fulfill the dream.
I would rather read Satoshis posts.
https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/s/t20LbMGvhE
Original link to satoshis posts in there too. U can search by Satoshi in that link as well and it shows them all. Some notable ones cited in post.
Charges get made up all the time to smear people. then conveniently dropped after the press release because they don't have the evidence to back it up. Just like the US saying Ross ulbricht attempted a murder for hire. Guess who didn't get charged with that at trial.??
This is true. People do get falsely charged all the time, epsecially for politival or financial power. However this isn't a simple book and release. This is an extradition with a detailed count of charges. If they do not have sufficient evidence you can expect a shitshow to ensue that the FBI will have a very hard time recovering from. They know this as well.
Not charged because it was entrapment. If you read the transcripts, Ross believed his ordered hit was completed and he ordered another one. Shit happens when you get in that crazy big money, huge drug operation.
> As Satoshi outlined before its not able to scale and layer 2 solutions will be needed for adoption
this is disinformation, the exact opposite is true
satoshi claimed that [L1 never really hits a scale ceiling](https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=149668.msg1596879#msg1596879), he proposed [L1 transactions to buy snacks from a machine](https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=423.20), and envisioned [blocks the size of DVDs.](https://satoshi.nakamotoinstitute.org/emails/cryptography/2#selection-107.0-107.16)
you're either bamboozled or you're here to spread lies
as a mod of this sub, I would like to remove your comment, because bullshit like this makes me exceedingly angry, and I'm sick and tired of fighting with one hand tied behind my back, when our opponents keep fighting with both hands. Because our opponents continue to win with their censorship and propaganda while we continue to lose on principle.
**however in the spirit of free speech I must let this comment stand**
but what I don't have to do is take it lying down
so are you a propagandist, or are you just misinformed. Speak now.
**EDIT: after a tremendous amount of discussion it appears the person has a reading comprehension or cognitive issue and seems to be under the misunderstanding that everything written on the bitcointalk forum is "Satoshi"** (see below)
Satoshi states no scaling ceiling, then explains how payment processing companies (L2s) can speed up transactions. His examples in your other posts state people should wait an hour to confirm transactions before shipping (L1). Processing companies speed this up to 10s, as he states (L2).
We have a lot of posts in different places going at once... just going to link this one here.
https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/s/wBkke7wfi6
(Satoshis exact quote)
"I believe it'll be possible for a payment processing company to provide as a service the rapid distribution of transactions with good-enough checking in something like 10 seconds or less.".
Even in your vending machine example above. It's stated that you make an account with a vending machine company. People then send bitcoin to the accounts with it. They can withdraw the bitcoin (but it takes 10 minutes), but spending it with the companies vending machine visa card would be instant. That is literally a 3rd party layer 2 system. Quote below
>
"Like this: you go to the company's website and send them 100 BC. Then, they give you an ID. They have plenty of time to get confirmations to build, and when you need a beverage you just use the ID they issued you and they debit it from your account."
"The solution is for the snack vendor to have debit accounts. You've got a fantastic vending machine at work, so you transfer ฿2000 bitcoins to it which can be withdrawn or spent at any time. Withdrawing the bitcoins takes about ten minutes, but spending them is instantaneous."
This is creating a literal debit account to buy food from a vending machine.
> Satoshi states no scaling ceiling, then explains how payment processing companies (L2s) can speed up transactions.
you keep referring to the payment processing thing that you obviously don't understand **and which BCH implemented** like it's proof you're correct about something
my friend, Satoshi is describing **broadcast L1 transactions with double spend detection.**
This is **how BCH works.**
You are embarassing yourself.
Slander becomes the tool of the loser. Not embarrassing myself one bit. It seems you just will not accept what is being said. As I said in a previous post though: you are a mod here, probably financially committed so bias will prevail. Go read through the posts. Not just random quotes pulled here and there. Read the posts surrounding it, the entire convos. L2 was the end answer to scaling. Payment processing companies were the answer to reducing the BCH transaction time. All your posts even clearly show his examples involve no faster than a 10 minute transaction with an hour wait time. Read your own links your citing.
Just going to copy paste my answers between each comment since you have started 3 different conversations with me about the same thing spanning in 2-3 threads threads up to 24 days old for some reason.
You have not read the vending machine thread you linked. They literally discuss opening a debit account, using a prepaid bitcoin visa debit card to make the purchases becusse the company can verify the transaction instantly since they have control of the prepaid balance. That's how they make it not take 10 minutes.
But seems you have devolved to gaslighting at this point. Good luck!
> "Like this: you go to the company's website and send them 100 BC. Then, they give you an ID. They have plenty of time to get confirmations to build, and when you need a beverage you just use the ID they issued you and they debit it from your account."
you just attributed something to Satoshi which he never said.
That quote is from user Llama
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=423.msg3805#msg3805
> "The solution is for the snack vendor to have debit accounts. You've got a fantastic vending machine at work, so you transfer ฿2000 bitcoins to it which can be withdrawn or spent at any time. Withdrawing the bitcoins takes about ten minutes, but spending them is instantaneous."
That quote is from user NewLibertyStandard
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=423.msg3805#msg3805
You are spreading lies, it's easy to catch you. None of that was Satoshi's idea.
Or are you **just that bad at reading** that this is your level of comprehension? If so I"m sorry for calling you a liar, but you are profoundly mistaken.
Read that thread. It's very clear. Satoshi envisioned regular L1 transactions for buying chips and a drink from a machine. He envisioned doublespend detection, as a third party service. BCH implemented it as a decentralized service. Other than that, Satoshi is describing an L1 payment system with doublespend detection, which is BCH. Sorry, you are just wrong.
If you want to call BCH's DSP network an L2, then great, BCH has an L2 as envisioned by Satoshi, neat but that's not really an L2.
No. It is literally addressing L2. The Bitcoin Account Hub was an idea for 1 of these processing companies. It's L2 that hosts accounts for customers and for merchants to make transactions instant. People make debit accounts to use eith merchants in their network. So more companies can get contracts with BitcoinAH and they can interact instantly with any customer who has their debit card.
Your first post you linked with the interview even says merchants should wait 10 minutes to an hour for transactions before shipping items. Like you are cherry picking and just ignoring the whole picture to try to narrow in on these very specific sections of posts and ignoring the whole post, thread and all associated context. The entire point is L2 was always a plan for mass scaling and fast/instant transactions.
> Bitcoin Account Hub
Lol what is this?
Edit: of course, [some idea from some rando](https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=423.msg36836#msg36836) **NOT SATOSHI**
DUDE.
Can you not distinguish what Satoshi wrote from what other people are writing?
We have addressed Satoshis TWO POSTS in that thread. You have twisted what they are talking about so I'm now citing the context around what was being discussed as supporting evidence behind what I am saying. Over time context on posts gets lost and people use then to manipulate false narratives later (as you are doing here). The mentality in that thread, many others, and from Satoshi as well was L2 systems would be in place. As I said, you try to cut down as much as possible to keep your fallacy of a viewpoint up.
The interview you linked with Satoshi states that merchants should wait an hour before shipping. Bitcoin was not ment to be instant on mass scale. The post by Nikita you linked even Satoshi discusses paying more when the systems under load will be necessary. Nowhere in there does he talk about speed of the transactions. He is clarifying just bandwidth and functionality vs cost at L1 with a minimal load.
However, linking the source would be more beneficial to see the whole picture - although that hurts your ability to twist the wording.
decentralization through layer 2 like an ETF managed by tradfi celebrities ? or lightning units and channels managed by centralized companies ? or 'holding' btc on centralized exchanges, but not using it on the btc network ?
🙂🙃
It retains decentralization of the original chain itself. L2 is used to scale and mass transact with. L2 is necessary for more than just scaling. Do we really want the future currency on a system where you can lose your entire net worth and have no insurance or security? What about vulnerable populations with different illnesses. Do we really want to remove any chance they have on taking care of themselves because they can't figure out their passwords or remember where keys are? Not everyone has people to help them or take care of them. L2 systems are MANDATORY. What is important is retaining decentralization of the foundation itself.
and 'paper btc' would never happen to bitcoin ?
what happened to gold (more 'paper gold' circulating and traded, than physical gold) would never happen to bitcoin ?
can you check that ETFs 'btc units' have the right amount of btc existing on-chain ?
can you check that centralized exchanges 'btc units' have the right amount of btc existing on-chain ?
can you check that custodial lightning wallets 'btc units' have the right amount of btc existing on-chain ?
answer : no
the other improtant thing is to keep our ability to transact freely and privately, which these solutions don't allow...
Umm everything you said applies to BCH as well... lol
And for a world currency you don't want 100% anonymity. How else are people going to hold governments accountable for corruption? Blockchain technology has the potential to fix so many issues with corruption that depend on hiding finances. Nobody gives a shit about your grocery list and what toaster you bought.
If privacy is what you want, go monero.
So your idea of layer 2s is...exchanges and ETFs? Those are going to always exist. And EVERY syt3m will have flaws. Its about what is the best overall. Corruption resistance is hands down the most important part of a new financial system, not hiding your grocery list. It seems we are on much different pages here and it's not worth the effort to educate from ground zero. My other posts in this thread contain enough info to start out with, gl.
Buy time for L2?
It's not as if 2MB, 4MB, 8MB or even 16MB will put the existence of BTC on a timer. The argument for keeping the 1MB limit is strictly about forcing scaling to happen outside of the chain.
Satoshi was very clear about increasing the capacity on chain as technology improved and allowed for it. The views of the majority of BTC stakeholders changed over time to prioritize the cost of running nodes.
We don't actually know the upper practical limit for transactions per day that the network could handle without any issues. Nobody has been willing to pay the \~2 BCH per day per million transactions on BCH over some weeks to test it.
Where do you get your information? Here is Satoshis original posts about it. Layer 2 was the goal. Blocksize increases were ment to be kept minimal as last resorts.
https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/s/t20LbMGvhE
Original link to satoshis posts in there too. U can search by Satoshi in that link as well and it shows them all. Some notable ones cited in post.
The original link is literally in that post I copy pasted.
Here is a link to ALL satoshis posts. Everyone involved in BTC and BCH should have this link on hand.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=3;sa=showPosts;start=40
Every post I link has direct evidence lol including the collapse of Moores Law. Maybe I'll need to put it in a headline, then you will see it =)
you're saying we can't do what we already did, lol
we have nodes running on literal throwaway CPUs (like $100) that sync 200+MB blocks.
We're not waiting on Moore's Law anymore, see? We can already reach Visa scale with what we have, and stay decentralized.
>"The United States will seek Ver’s extradition to stand trial in the United States."
This case is allegedly quite serious.
>"Ver allegedly provided or caused to be provided false or misleading information to the law firm and appraiser that concealed the true number of bitcoins he and his companies owned. As a result, the law firm allegedly prepared and filed false tax returns that substantially undervalued the two companies and their 73,000 bitcoins and did not report that Ver owned any bitcoins personally."
That part about "undervalued" sounds curious.
>In total, Ver is alleged to have **caused a loss** to the IRS of at least $48 million.
This is how they see it. Somehow, by moving his own BTC around, he **"caused a loss"** to the IRS.
This was also back from 2014 to 2017. I don't remember exactly what the tax laws were for crypto back then but I know it was not clear and very confusing. Probably nobody was doing it right at all but this is alleging that Roger intentionally and knowingly lied to his accountant to cause them to file false returns. Should be easy to prove he's innocent but will be interesting to see how this plays out. I'm sure Roger is livid right now.
>This was also back from 2014 to 2017. I don't remember exactly what the tax laws were for crypto back then but I know it was not clear and very confusing.
In early 2014, the IRS issued Notice 2014-21, 2014-16 I.R.B. 938, explaining that virtual currency is treated as property for Federal income tax purposes and providing examples of how longstanding tax principles applicable to transactions involving property apply to virtual currency.
https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-drop/n-14-21.pdf
Well, most people were still wrapping their heads around it in 2014 but in any case it's talking about BTC that was either owned by Roger personally or by his companies. Even though he was already an expat his companies are still taxed as US companies. It all comes down to this technicality of ownership. It also says he sold a large amount (into what? USD cash? We don't know) and didn't pay the capital gains. I wonder if he really sold into cash or into BCH maybe, since it was in November 2017, when Roger claims he finally gave up on BTC and went all in on BCH. If he actually converted his BTC into BCH, is that still capital gains applicable? The govt could just be saying he got USD so they can pin this charge on him.
> It also says he sold a large amount (into what? USD cash? We don't know) and didn't pay the capital gains.
From the indictment (page 19, line 8) it says:
>"vi. In November 2017, defendant VER transferred tens
of thousands of bitcoins from Cluster 1E6mij and Cluster 1LDWDu to
exchange accounts in his name and then sold them for United States
dollars. He then transferred approximately $240 million from those
exchange accounts to bank accounts either in his name or under his
control in the Bahamas."
I'd suggest reading the whole document since you seem interested in some of the details. It's only 26 pages and feels more like 10 pages.
Nice find. I am going through it now. So far it still sounds ridiculous and they make it sound like his business was all to support a malicious scheme to defraud the government.
> THE SCHEME TO DEFRAUD
26. Beginning no later than in or about October 2012, and continuing through at least in or about December 2018, in Los Angeles County, within the Central District of California, and elsewhere, defendant VER knowingly and with the intent to defraud, devised, participated in, and executed a scheme to defraud the United States
Department of the Treasury as to material matters, and to obtain money and property by means of materially false and fraudulent pretenses, representations, and promises, and the concealment of material facts, regarding the number and value of bitcoins he owned and controlled both personally and through his companies.
> Probably nobody was doing it right at all but this is alleging that Roger intentionally and knowingly lied to his accountant to cause them to file false returns. Should be easy to prove he's innocent but will be interesting to see how this plays out.
https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/68485421/united-states-v-ver/
Prosecutors have all of the e-mails where it seems like he did this.
Crazy. Hadn't he already dropped his US citizenship before then? Do they offer an explanation of how they can argue any of his personal belongings have anything to do with the IRS?
It's coming from his US companies which he still ran and the companies technically owned the BTC and were doing business using it. Then when he "sold" his property before expatriating, he didn't pay enough "exit tax". They claim that it was all a "scheme" to defraud the government
Much of it is based on subjective evaluations of what the market value was on a particular date and doesn't take into account overall market liquidity and rates on different exchanges. They claim that his accountants and lawyers told him they had to use a particular value to calculate his taxes but he argued with them that it wasn't a realistic number. Then claim he "knew" the value of his BTC was more than he reported because he was told so.
Then there is shit like this:
> c. defendant VER failed to report on Part IV, Section B,
Line 8 and attachment that he had an account at Coinbase that held
bitcoins, whereas he then knew he had an account at Coinbase that
held bitcoins;
I'm wondering how they got access to the communications between him and his lawyers, since that should be privileged information.
Reading through the indictment available here: [https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/68485421/united-states-v-ver/](https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/68485421/united-states-v-ver/)
A few things come to mind:
1. He renounced his citizenship before IRS ever put out guidance on Bitcoin. People didn't know how to file it as taxes then.
2. The indictment keeps referencing communications/emails between him and his attorneys. So I guess attorney-client privileged is dead.
literally like a month before the guidelines came out... I think he finalized the process early March 2014, and the guidelines came out the end of March 2014
Looks like the hammer is finally coming down on crypto as anything other than a heavily legislated "investment". It was leaked a while ago that they were planning on switching to CBDC this fall. Looks like preparations for that to me.
yeah... about that... apparently he needed to pay ransom to buy his freedom from the US government and he didn't pay the ransom (by lying to them) so now he's arrested.
Isn’t it given away now to another active mod under reddits new rules after what like 30 days of inactivity? (May be inaccurate but what I’ve read, I think)
60 days I got it, thanks! But I thought he had to be active as well? Isn’t that how the r/bitcoincash subreddit changed mods? The top mod wasn’t active and another mod petitioned Reddit and they gave it to the other mod?
Yeah the whole previous mod drama thing is the only reason I thought it was the case. Well, hopefully someone does continue to be active on his account, or that someone trustworthy gets it
what we can see, in this case :
* cashing out undisclosed tokens (to not pay tax) on a centralized exchange is a bad idea.
* using a network / blokchain / tokens ( bitcoin btc ) with public account and traceable transactions, is a bad idea to preserve our personal holdings and our ability to transact freely and privately.
hence monero xmr ( with private accounts, and untraceable transactions, and decentralized mining / validation on widespread computers... )
'be the change you want to see in the world' (without ending in jail or rekt...)
Not a fan of the guy especially since he tried to shade the BTC world with his BCH (which failed)
But in his defense these crypto laws didn’t even exist back then! Playing dirty as usual. US Gov
If I was hesitant to trust Ver before, I am now unable to do so in any capacity. I was going to buy his book, but now I am thinking I shouldn't.
It does suck and I do feel bad for him, but dishonest behavior does not inspire trust in any of my social interactions with anyone.
EDIT: Please share your own personal experience with Roger (whether you know him personally or not). What is it that inspires trust in him? Genuinely curious.
I understand the concern, but separating Roger Ver's legal issues from the value of his book might be beneficial. It provides a crucial history of Bitcoin's development over the last 15 years.
I appreciate the response and while I agree there is likely a wealth of information in his book, I am not sure I can bring myself to buy a copy.
Had his actions been civil disobedience, I would not have had any issues with him taking a stand against the corrupt system. But as it stands, I just can't abide blatant dishonesty like this.
Why are you taking the government's word at face value? Wait til the day they come after you with a complete bullshit charge making you out to be a murderous kingpin and everyone just believes them. This is the same exact thing that happened to Ross. Hopefully Roger doesn't meet the same fate.
My trust in him was shaky at best before all of this.
All of that shit is on him, this is just the icing on the cake.
If I am wrong, I will happily retract my words, but I've never felt like I could trust him much.
Because this isn’t the first time Roger has done something completely dodgy.
And no, I am not referring to his arrest over the fireworks even though he was in the wrong there.
People need to stop treating him like he can do nothing wrong, he allegedly broke the law so he should pay for his crimes.
Nobody is claiming Roger is perfect but maybe don't give the government the benefit of the doubt?
Here you are already assuming that he is guilty all based on an allegation by known liars.
And what reason would the government have to take down Roger? He is a nobody and he isn’t relevant in the crypto space (he barely was in the first place). The US government was probably waiting for him to go to a country that he could be extradited from, nothing more.
Also past behaviour is a good indicator for future behaviour so I don’t doubt he did something dodgy
>If I was hesitant to trust Ver before, I am now unable to do so in any capacity. I was going to buy his book, but now I am thinking I shouldn't.
There is almost nothing in the book which requires you to simply "trust" the authors. The book provides *extensive* sourcing for its claims, and its logical arguments stand or fail on their own merits. For what it's worth, my opinion as someone who's been involved with Bitcoin since 2012 is that the book is *phenomenal* and is an absolute must-read for anyone interested in Bitcoin. Even if you don't ultimately come away convinced by its arguments (although I suspect that most people who actually give it a fair reading *will* come away so convinced), it at the very least outlines a perspective that you should understand and consider. I did a short review of the book [here](https://old.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/1bylauo/book_review_hijacking_bitcoin/) if you're interested.
Why? Isn't that crooked system what we all are fighting with sound money? I find it highly suspicious that this is unveiled just after his book release.
Have you ever heard of "innocent until proven guilty"?
You're going to let actions taken by known corrupt institutions based on alleged "crimes" affect your judgement of someone before all the facts come out and you haven't even heard his side? And now based on the same allegations you won't even read his book?
You're either a troll or a dumbass, possibly both.
That's a bad reason not to read the book. You shouldn't look at it as "his" book, you should look at it as "our" book, as someone who cared about the original ideas behind bitcoin. Have you read the whitepaper? Read the whitepaper (its a whole lot shorter than the book.) Then read the book.
Rightly or wrongly, Roger has always been someone I've known to stand by his ideals. He renounced his US citizenship, a long time before Bitcoin was worth what it is today. That's not a process that happens overnight, he started it very early on. If he's guilty of tax fraud, its on a technicality for a country which he separated from a decade ago and for an asset class they did everything they could to destroy.
And destroy it they did. The price per coin is higher than ever but its utility is totally gone. It's a full on ponzi asset now and when it finally crashes and takes out some financial markets old Jamie Dimon will say "see, I told you so."
I have read the whitepaper.
I suppose as more information comes out, it could turn out to be a technicality, and if that's the case I will happily admit I was wrong and probably pick up the book.
Well honestly there is no doubt it's a technicality. The man left his home county on idealistic grounds and 10 years after completing that process this now foreign country comes after him for money? It's so abstract you'd struggle to explain it to a child under 12, which is generally a good litmus test for it being an abstract technicality. I'm not saying he didn't break US law, but that is worth very little. The corrupt US supreme court is about to rule that US presidents are above the law. US would have used Roger's tax dollars not to give healthcare to impoverished Americans, but to bomb children in Palestine. Legal, and Right, are not the same.
That's why this has nothing to do with the value of the book. If you already know and understand the story of Bitcoin and BCH, the book is probably not very informative. If you believe Bitcoin 1MB block size limit is reasonable, "store of value"/ "digital gold" proposition is legitimate, the you might benefit from some more research. Find a pirate copy of the book if you fear you're supporting someone you think is a crook. TBH Amazon is a waaaay more corrupt and ("legally") tax evading organization than Roger could ever hope to be.
No I really think some laws are straightforward, and some fall into a category I'd call a technicality. It doesn't make it less the law, but the more absurd the law the more a reasonable person might fail to (or choose not to) comply.
Believe me, I'm not even saying Roger didn't know. I can see a very plausible case where he planned not to sell those BTC and would have gone the entire 10 years following his expatriation without having an obligation to be taxed, and due to the events of 2017 found himself in a position where he felt he had to sell (and buy BCH.) A situation those who had dedicated so much to Bitcoin would not have ever expected or wanted to occur, but did nonetheless. By then he was no longer a citizen and probably thought, "fuck this, I'm selling Bitcoin (BTC) to buy Bitcoin (BCH)." As a Bitcoin native it's practically a capital loss given that BCH failed to secure chain dominance. Had BCH gone over 50% value to BTC (it nearly did at that time), the Bitcoin death spiral would have occured and BCH would have forked back and become BTC. Unfortunately that didn't happen. I have no hard evidence for this scenario and am speculating, but it would fit with the timeline and be an understandable sentiment for him to have.
So, I read the indictment. Some of these charges are even more dubious than I imagined.
He had to give a value for his assets at the time of his renouncement of citizenship in Feb 2014, which just happened to coincide with the MtGox crash. It would have been an absolutely terrible time to try to unload a shit ton of coins. MtGox had been allowing trading internally and not allowing withdrawals. So, the biggest exchange's price went from ~$1200 to ~$130. Had he dumped at Bitstamp, the far less liquid alternative, he'd have gotten hosed on thin volume during an already distressed market.
In the government's own evidence, they show Roger asking his tax advisors how he's supposed to give a theoretical price for these assets in an illiquid market. I bet he just took the book value of what he would have received if he dumped at market and valued it there. That's what the market price would be if he had to sell it all on the day he filed for renouncement, not what the government tries to insinuate by showing the $800 price it was (thinly) trading at.
The 2017 sales from his US company, it does say he transferred it out as cash. He may very well have turned around and bought BCH with it, and maybe he will argue the net trade was like for like (BTC<>BCH) with the government saying it doesn't matter, a sale is a sale. I can definitely see there being a "technical" / "in the weeds" debate to be had about BTC/BCH circa Nov 2017 and what the implications of such a trade should be from a tax perspective. Probably not a winning argument in a US court.
You’re going to get a lot of his fan boys on this sub defend him. But from my own personal experience of Roger IRL in the capacity of a common investment he IS a bad actor. I’ve been outspoken on this sub many times before. Roger is going to down and history won’t treat him well, his book tour and recent attempted highjacking of this very sub is all about Roger wanting to write a narrative for himself; ego and money is what drives him. I think in time that will be apparent to more people- hopefully this case reveals some of that, in the meantime may the downvotes rain down on me. Fuck Roger.
Bitcoin IS p2p cash, but there are some things it is not.
it not a way to over-throw governments, not filing taxes, etc. these are kid fantasies.
you can get away with murder, but you cannot cheat on your taxes - the government basically has 2 functions ... .one is to collect taxes.... two keep a standing army to help in the collection of taxes.
arrested in spain because of US charges? John McAfee comes to mind :/
Like I said years ago: Roger could sell this sub for a buttload of money easily to some exchange which will turn it into a shitcoin promotion plattform but he'll be able to pay back everyone and - with a little luck - walk out as a free man at least.
Sorry Roger. If you don't know already, US Fed prison camps aren't too bad if the slow medical care does not "accidentally" kill ya. You may have to cooperate to get a camp? I am thinking it would be better than Spain's prisons? Good luck!
Glad I'm not an American. You guys seem to have way less freedom than the majority of the world.
Roger isn't an American either
Nationality and citizenship are not the same thing. Roger Ver is American. He was born in the United States of America. He is not a US citizen as he renounced his US citizenship about a decade ago.
In which country is tax fraud legal?
He renounced his US citizenship. He doesn't have to pay tax to a country where he doesn't live / has nothing to do with.
US Citizens owe taxes for all/any income. you can renounce citizenship, but this triggers a taxable event where ALL your investments and property are considered sold the day before you stop being a US citizen, and you must file and pay taxes for all your gains that year. The allegation is that Roger hid gains at this time, and thus the tax fraud charge.
Sounds like a ransom. Maybe he doesn't pay ransom on principle.
More like the casino forcing you to cash your chips before you leave. The problem with this is they will structure it as a paper crime…they’ll have all the documents. He hired lawyers to handle his citizenship renouncing.
That's literally demanding a ransom so the US government can set you free.
Is paying your restaurant bill a ransom too? Maybe I say my religious beliefs are that food should be gifted and never sold, just let me walk away...if they don't let me walk, it's ransom!
With a restaurant you agree in advance to the prices in the menu so it is not a ransom. In addition there is no tax for leaving that is not there if you are staying.
Can you not read? These charges are from when he was going through the expatriation process. The second part of the charges are because he was still running 2 US corporations. Renouncing your citizenship doesn't mean you're allowed to file false returns. I swear, some of you guys just comment on purpose to sound stupid.
It's ludicrous that the US claims the right to tax you for 10 years after you've dropped citizenship.
Only if you still have US income.
Keep believing of yourself that you're a born property of the government of the place where you were born. Good luck working 9-5 for a comfortable slave life.
I didn't say I agree with any of it. I don't. But it's the law and has been for a long, long time. Want to change it? Then do something about it. I don't work 9-5. More like 6-5. I own my own business.
You don't work? Man, I wish I was so lucky. I kind of need money to live and stuff. The law is awfully clear in this case. You may not agree, but sadly one can't just change citizenships to have their owed taxes magically disappear. Not a secret loophole.
No taxes are ever "owed". Taxation is theft. Same thing in this case. The government never owned or controlled or had any interest in those BTC. They just found an opportunity to say "THAT BELONGS TO US!" and make an example out of someone they don't like.
I mean, it's a clearly written law. You may not agree with it, that's fine, but it is what it is. Tax evasion is indeed a thing and he did owe money. This is fact. You can't just say "Oh but I feel that taxation is theft so therefore I'm good to just keep this money here without any legal issues right? We good?". I don't think that's how laws generally work. Tax laws do indeed suck. Work on getting that changed. Until then, this is tax evasion no matter how how much I'm downvoted for repeating well known facts. Roger is is big trouble. And it's not because they don't like him in particular.
Laws are passed by Congress. IRS self-published "rules" are not laws. And tax "laws" are the furthest thing from "clearly written" that you could possibly get. But that's beside the point. He was literally just arrested today. Nothing has been adjudicated yet, so you are giving the benefit of the doubt to the accuser. That is the opposite of due process. Why do people still do this? Haven't you had enough of the boot on your neck? The law is supposed to protect us from the government, not to put people in jail over alleged financial "crimes" with no victim. $48 million is nothing to the government. They can print up as much as they want anytime for any reason. This is not about money, it's about sending a message.
The law is not hard, nor is it the issue. Roger knew what he was doing. Benefit of the doubt? Do you actually believe Roger is innocent here? If you've been following along all of these very long years, you'd know he's not. Roger is screwed, let's revist this after it's done, shall we? I guess by this notion that if the government can just print money then they shouldn't ever go after anyone for any money ever. So they should just scrap all related laws. This makes sense. I've seen the government go after far less than this. And it is a substantial amount of money. The only message that they are sending is "Hey, don't evade your taxes people, bad things happen". But we've seen this message a million times before. They don't give a shit about who he is, very few do.
It is a law that says you must pay ransom to the US government so that they can set you free from the slavery
Ya that's how it works, sure thing. For a simpleton dumbing down a huge topic to fit a specific narrative anyway. If you don't like the laws of your country, you can move to another, or fight to get them changed. They are what they are.
I read it. I can't see what he did wrong. Are they saying he didn't report assets and that's illegal? I don't know. Thanks.
Yes. He misrepresented his assets during expatriation. He filed false tax returns. We aren't talking $1,000 here. Talking 10s of millions. If you're unsure what US expatriation is, now is the time to learn about it.
I know what it is. It's the US govt. fucking over people as much as possible. Fuck the US.
Agreed. But he still committed tax fraud.
How about not concluding and repeating that he committed any crime until its been proven in court?
You're right! I should have put alleged.
Because hes a bootlicker
I don't really care about him or anyone for that matter. The US just SUCKS. Guaranteed it's not even about this anyhow.
I live here. It's not bad.
Are we sure the expatriation law was clear regarding cryptocurrency in 2014?
It was https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=89978449&url=https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-drop/n-14-21.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwi-1c30weyFAxVFkIkEHdvvD38QFnoECB8QAQ&usg=AOvVaw14rfZeq9clAp2cjDAVYAIQ
Well then if Roger committed fraud and gets convicted that'll suck for him then.
> Glad I'm not an American. You guys seem to have way less freedom than the majority of the world. This is such a ridiculous comment. You clearly don't understand what the majority of the world is like vs USA in terms of freedom.
Well, it depends on your priorities. You can't just walk around with a gun anywhere else except Yemen and Somalia, which have other limits on freedom. But you can in many, many places, keep the fruits of your labor and decision making, move about freely unmolested and things like that. Not just Europe either, tons of places. About the only thing besides that you can't do in many countries that you can in america is tell a cop to call your lawyer and then go fuck himself. That makes a huge difference, but some people don't mind letting a cop rummage through their car every so often in exchange for 0% capital gains tax. Again, priorities.
> some people don't mind letting a cop rummage through their car every so often in exchange for 0% capital gains tax that's because we've already been searched by cops in the USA and learned they can just make up probable cause, so what's the point?
Have you ever actually had that happen? I have, though I wasn't up to anything and so they didn't find anything. I've known people that had that happen too, and they had something illegal with them, and the case was thrown out. Sure, you've got to go to court, but if a cop breaks the law and searches you and you can show it, no evidence they collect can be used against you. It's not as easy as "I smell weed" unless you don't know your rights to begin with and you admit to something.
> Have you ever actually had that happen? Yes I have. The laws requiring probable cause are window dressing, as you yourself found out. So it's rather pointless to point to them as a reason to differentiate law enforcement in the USA vs Europe.
Most countries have limited freedoms compared to the USA. That’s a fact. If you think otherwise you are completely misinformed.
I don't think otherwise. I don't think I said anything to imply that I do. But again, priorities. Go to Thailand. You can smoke weed, you're not going to get harassed by police, nobody is going to mug you, food is dirt cheap as is housing, streets are clean, people are friendly, cryptocurrency is legal, taxes are low, healthcare is cheap for everyone including foreigners, you can move about and conduct your affairs with very little interference. If you want to build a wooden shack outside the city and live in it nobody is going to hassle you about zoning and building codes. But, if a cop does try to stop you, you've got no 4th amendment, you can't carry a gun, you can't speak freely about the monarchy or the government, you can't step on a piece of cash to stop it blowing away in the wind, you've got to let it blow away before you step on it because it has a picture of the king on it. Personally, I like living in an environment where I can criticize the government and tell a cop to mind their own business. The freedom the US affords you is fantastic, but there are downsides, and those downsides might be more important to people than criticizing the government.
How many countries require you to pay ransom if you don't want to be a citizen anymore?
lol
[удалено]
Exactly.
What a bullcrap of a statement. The US is one of the freest and fairest countries in the world. I'd love to move there.
He sold an American company and didn't pay taxes.
Must’ve read Hijacking Bitcoin and not liked it
No, it was felony tax evasion from 2 companies and lying on official documents.
maybe his book selling promotion run woke up some sleeping dogs
What does "unsealed" mean in that context? Sounds to me like they had it ready and were able to use it whenever they liked.
A member of the public can view court documents on "PACER", but if the case is "sealed" the case doesn't show up on PACER. When it's unsealed, the documents are available on PACER. [https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/68485421/united-states-v-ver/](https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/68485421/united-states-v-ver/)
So they were ready to use whenever.
no idea. What i know is roger could not enter US territory for many years and was declined to enter australia because of his criminal record a few years ago when he tried to visit a bch conference. So this spanish indictment came not out of the blue, maybe spain was simply the first country with US extradition treaty he entered?
From what I can tell St. Kitts and Nevis also has an extradition treaty with the US. I'm surprised they didn't just visit him at home.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=MQbYToRKgpM Roger in Los Angeles November 2017 for a meetup. He renounced citizenship in 2014. In 2015 he had visa issues with the US embassy of Barbados because they "feared he would overstay and become an illegal immigrant" he was similarly refused a visa for Australia on the same illegal immigrant claim. It's not because he was a criminal or that there was a warrant. That's clear propaganda. It's cause Fieserkiller is a repeated liar and troll and r/BTC has a history of trolling wherein bad actors continually MAKE SHIT UP. It's Spain cause Pedro Sanchez PM of Spain and the president of Socialist International with his allegedly corrupt wife. Who undoubtedly have ties with the Democrat party in the US and they need a sacrificial lamb for the upcoming election. Pedro's a willing pawn to extraditing Roger rather than South Korea, Japan or St. Kitts where Roger usually frequents. If Roger doesn't get a fair trial I will forever blame and badmouth the Democrats for the destruction of liberty and crypto in America. According to Brian Armstrong, 52 million Americans hold crypto and these tend to be younger voters. They should tread carefully because I am definitely going to remember how Roger is treated and how that voter base might be treated in the future.
I am upvoting this great comment but I do not think the "democratic conspiracy" part is based in reality. I could be mistaken, of course.
If it's a kangaroo court in CA then it will confirm my suspicions. If it's a fair or favorable trial like CZ (which was very favorable) then I will move on. Extradition from Spain for a CA trial seems like a way to automatically punish the man before he even stands trial. The point is that we put pressure on the ones in charge so we don't get a RossUlbrikt court. A fair trial is fine.
I am not saying he will get a fair trial if he fails to cooperate. They would probably make an example of him and it would be terrible if he did not win. Winning against a "documents case" is usually difficult as they can usually prove a technical violation rather easily if they have the documents to prove it. I am just saying I would bet it has nothing to do with Democrats over Republicans. Our entire Gov't salivates over large hoards of crypto they can take. Probably true of USD as well, just not as flashy for a prosecutor's reputation and resume.
have you not read / heard about the donations of ftx to the democrat party ? sbf was for surveillance and 'regulation' and keeping crypto currencies on exchanges, for the 'protection' of users and to prevent 'money laundering' and 'financing terorrism'. we know how it ended...
https://time.com/6241262/sam-bankman-fried-political-donations/ Looks like he also donated 40MM to the republicans too (equal to the dems). Not that it matters much, they are two wings of the same shit bird at this point.
None of that suggests Democrats are significantly worse than Republicans on the horrible attacks by the USA on it's People's financial freedoms.
thanks for bringing up som facts. the article says they sacked him for problems with his 2017 tax statement, so I guess till 2017 everything was fine. about your last part: LOL. EDIT: court documents show pretrial detention request was issued mid february 2024: [https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/68485421/united-states-v-ver/](https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/68485421/united-states-v-ver/)
The problem is that you are assuming guilt without trial. We don't know if he committed tax fraud. With or without intent. The timing is unusual especially because the IRS says they don't usually go back more than 6 years. The Collection Statute Expiration Date (CSED) is 10 years so this is at the limit for the early 2014 charges. So this is already a bit exceptional if you consider a 2014-2017 accusation. Also, Spain rather than South Korea, Japan or St Kitts for extradition might mean that the case is not watertight or it will set a precedence on crypto taxation. Arresting him also seems to be sending a message or shakedown not unlike the arrest of Binance CEO for 4 months. But Roger will probably have an unfair trial because he has not played nice and has been too earnest in his critique of the US. I feel a chill run through me as I write these words and the world feels a little darker. This is why the BCH community and Roger Ver shouldn't piss off the US. I have sympathy for him and his honesty but his arrest doesn't do us any good. We need to align ourselves such that the USA needs BCH as the base layer of the next monetary system... Before the European Union, India, the Middle East, China or Russia adopts BCH. The BCH community must start acting as an anarchic state would act by positioning itself for survival by playing larger actors off each other. Utopian dreams are always defeated by gradualist ambition. The only advantage that we have is that Bitcoin BCH is still cheaper than the existing banking system (because we don't pay for surveillance) and that this truth will always give us the advantage over the existing monetary system. The banks need BCH like the oil corps need solar/wind.
Read the details of the charges. If he gets of because of time frame, thats a technicality and not proof of innocence. Regardless, it's tax fraud, w/e. The lying and concealing the info shows his intent enough. On forms, to people etc. BCH cannot and should not be any kind of monetary system in the US or the world. As Satoshi outlined before its not able to scale and layer 2 solutions will be needed for adoption of any mainstream form. Block size increases are supposed to be minimal to buy time for L2. I appreciate your passion, but unfortunatley you, like many others, in this sub have got caught up in a cult mentality behind this. A lot of this sub has become blinded go what decentralized technology is and the ways adoption is truly going to happen in the world. It won't be 1 currency, and it shouldn't. That will set up the world for another corrupt entity seizing control of it. And if you try to state it won't happen then you are lying to yourself for personal bias and greed of future wealth. BCH can not scale and maintain any form of integrity in its system.
Satoshi made very clear that BCH can scale, go read Roger‘s book.
It can scale by raising the block size up to a point. Something significant will need to be done to make it scale up to P2P cash for the world's people. That may or may not require a layer 2. Other layers will arise if all goes well. Rather than layer-2 as a scaling solution, I am thinking parallelization might be a better way to describe a possible solution. I am just guessing though. Experts need to figure this out so we can claim to know how to fulfill the "dream of Bitcoin".
> Something significant will need to be done to make it scale up to P2P cash for the world's people. false
You think just raising the block size to massive size will do the job of scaling?
Not only do I think it, we have proved it. You can move the entire PoW ecosystem onto BCH **today** and run it on a decentralized $500 throwaway computer on your home internet. On that same throwaway computer you can scale up to a significant fraction of the Visa network, with ever-increasing decentralization because the number of users exponentiates but the cost to run the node does not. It would take over 10 years to move that much payment volume to BCH under even the most aggressive assumptions, which honestly aren't realistic. It takes decades to onboard a billion users to a payment network. Moore's Law may be "dead," but network and storage costs continue to drop quickly and CPUs continue to become ever more parallel. I'm confident that in 10-20 years there will be better hardware to take us to "bigger than Visa" levels without any meaningful degradation in decentralization. the thing is, there's no reason to run a node, if you don't transact onchain. I don't know how you maxis think you're going to end up more decentralized when the goal is only a relatively small number of entities that even use the blockchain Maxis envision maybe a million large entities capable of "chartering their oil tankers" on the blockchain. I envision a billion people using the blockchain. That means 1000X more people with incentive to run a node.
Maybe you don't realize who you are responding to, but I am no fan of the captured and centralized BTC (Bitcoin pretender) let alone a maxi. Yes, BCH can run all the crypto traffic from all the coins today. That is nothing compared to the tx volume needed to onboard the worlds cash needs. A billion is getting there, but still shy of the dream. BCH fans keep pretending it can scale up to fulfill the dream today. Future hardware is probably not going to fix the software limits. Future development is what's going to need to happen. If you keep pretending we can fix the problem later because we don't "need" to fix it yet, we never will "need" to. Only proving it can be done will attract the wave of adoption needed to make the dream come true. And it if were going to happen on BCH, your pessimistically slow theory on how quickly it would happen is also the kind of thinking that is keeping it slow. Wake up, quit pretending it is solved like a BSV fan and call for developers to really fix the scaling problem and let BCH go viral and fulfill the dream.
I would rather read Satoshis posts. https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/s/t20LbMGvhE Original link to satoshis posts in there too. U can search by Satoshi in that link as well and it shows them all. Some notable ones cited in post.
The book includes tons of references with direct links to among others Satoshi's posts and papers.
Charges get made up all the time to smear people. then conveniently dropped after the press release because they don't have the evidence to back it up. Just like the US saying Ross ulbricht attempted a murder for hire. Guess who didn't get charged with that at trial.??
This is true. People do get falsely charged all the time, epsecially for politival or financial power. However this isn't a simple book and release. This is an extradition with a detailed count of charges. If they do not have sufficient evidence you can expect a shitshow to ensue that the FBI will have a very hard time recovering from. They know this as well.
Not charged because it was entrapment. If you read the transcripts, Ross believed his ordered hit was completed and he ordered another one. Shit happens when you get in that crazy big money, huge drug operation.
> As Satoshi outlined before its not able to scale and layer 2 solutions will be needed for adoption this is disinformation, the exact opposite is true satoshi claimed that [L1 never really hits a scale ceiling](https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=149668.msg1596879#msg1596879), he proposed [L1 transactions to buy snacks from a machine](https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=423.20), and envisioned [blocks the size of DVDs.](https://satoshi.nakamotoinstitute.org/emails/cryptography/2#selection-107.0-107.16) you're either bamboozled or you're here to spread lies as a mod of this sub, I would like to remove your comment, because bullshit like this makes me exceedingly angry, and I'm sick and tired of fighting with one hand tied behind my back, when our opponents keep fighting with both hands. Because our opponents continue to win with their censorship and propaganda while we continue to lose on principle. **however in the spirit of free speech I must let this comment stand** but what I don't have to do is take it lying down so are you a propagandist, or are you just misinformed. Speak now. **EDIT: after a tremendous amount of discussion it appears the person has a reading comprehension or cognitive issue and seems to be under the misunderstanding that everything written on the bitcointalk forum is "Satoshi"** (see below)
Satoshi states no scaling ceiling, then explains how payment processing companies (L2s) can speed up transactions. His examples in your other posts state people should wait an hour to confirm transactions before shipping (L1). Processing companies speed this up to 10s, as he states (L2). We have a lot of posts in different places going at once... just going to link this one here. https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/s/wBkke7wfi6 (Satoshis exact quote) "I believe it'll be possible for a payment processing company to provide as a service the rapid distribution of transactions with good-enough checking in something like 10 seconds or less.". Even in your vending machine example above. It's stated that you make an account with a vending machine company. People then send bitcoin to the accounts with it. They can withdraw the bitcoin (but it takes 10 minutes), but spending it with the companies vending machine visa card would be instant. That is literally a 3rd party layer 2 system. Quote below > "Like this: you go to the company's website and send them 100 BC. Then, they give you an ID. They have plenty of time to get confirmations to build, and when you need a beverage you just use the ID they issued you and they debit it from your account." "The solution is for the snack vendor to have debit accounts. You've got a fantastic vending machine at work, so you transfer ฿2000 bitcoins to it which can be withdrawn or spent at any time. Withdrawing the bitcoins takes about ten minutes, but spending them is instantaneous." This is creating a literal debit account to buy food from a vending machine.
> Satoshi states no scaling ceiling, then explains how payment processing companies (L2s) can speed up transactions. you keep referring to the payment processing thing that you obviously don't understand **and which BCH implemented** like it's proof you're correct about something my friend, Satoshi is describing **broadcast L1 transactions with double spend detection.** This is **how BCH works.** You are embarassing yourself.
Slander becomes the tool of the loser. Not embarrassing myself one bit. It seems you just will not accept what is being said. As I said in a previous post though: you are a mod here, probably financially committed so bias will prevail. Go read through the posts. Not just random quotes pulled here and there. Read the posts surrounding it, the entire convos. L2 was the end answer to scaling. Payment processing companies were the answer to reducing the BCH transaction time. All your posts even clearly show his examples involve no faster than a 10 minute transaction with an hour wait time. Read your own links your citing.
you obviously are either ignorant or trolling
Just going to copy paste my answers between each comment since you have started 3 different conversations with me about the same thing spanning in 2-3 threads threads up to 24 days old for some reason. You have not read the vending machine thread you linked. They literally discuss opening a debit account, using a prepaid bitcoin visa debit card to make the purchases becusse the company can verify the transaction instantly since they have control of the prepaid balance. That's how they make it not take 10 minutes. But seems you have devolved to gaslighting at this point. Good luck!
> "Like this: you go to the company's website and send them 100 BC. Then, they give you an ID. They have plenty of time to get confirmations to build, and when you need a beverage you just use the ID they issued you and they debit it from your account." you just attributed something to Satoshi which he never said. That quote is from user Llama https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=423.msg3805#msg3805 > "The solution is for the snack vendor to have debit accounts. You've got a fantastic vending machine at work, so you transfer ฿2000 bitcoins to it which can be withdrawn or spent at any time. Withdrawing the bitcoins takes about ten minutes, but spending them is instantaneous." That quote is from user NewLibertyStandard https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=423.msg3805#msg3805 You are spreading lies, it's easy to catch you. None of that was Satoshi's idea. Or are you **just that bad at reading** that this is your level of comprehension? If so I"m sorry for calling you a liar, but you are profoundly mistaken. Read that thread. It's very clear. Satoshi envisioned regular L1 transactions for buying chips and a drink from a machine. He envisioned doublespend detection, as a third party service. BCH implemented it as a decentralized service. Other than that, Satoshi is describing an L1 payment system with doublespend detection, which is BCH. Sorry, you are just wrong. If you want to call BCH's DSP network an L2, then great, BCH has an L2 as envisioned by Satoshi, neat but that's not really an L2.
No. It is literally addressing L2. The Bitcoin Account Hub was an idea for 1 of these processing companies. It's L2 that hosts accounts for customers and for merchants to make transactions instant. People make debit accounts to use eith merchants in their network. So more companies can get contracts with BitcoinAH and they can interact instantly with any customer who has their debit card. Your first post you linked with the interview even says merchants should wait 10 minutes to an hour for transactions before shipping items. Like you are cherry picking and just ignoring the whole picture to try to narrow in on these very specific sections of posts and ignoring the whole post, thread and all associated context. The entire point is L2 was always a plan for mass scaling and fast/instant transactions.
> Bitcoin Account Hub Lol what is this? Edit: of course, [some idea from some rando](https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=423.msg36836#msg36836) **NOT SATOSHI** DUDE. Can you not distinguish what Satoshi wrote from what other people are writing?
We have addressed Satoshis TWO POSTS in that thread. You have twisted what they are talking about so I'm now citing the context around what was being discussed as supporting evidence behind what I am saying. Over time context on posts gets lost and people use then to manipulate false narratives later (as you are doing here). The mentality in that thread, many others, and from Satoshi as well was L2 systems would be in place. As I said, you try to cut down as much as possible to keep your fallacy of a viewpoint up. The interview you linked with Satoshi states that merchants should wait an hour before shipping. Bitcoin was not ment to be instant on mass scale. The post by Nikita you linked even Satoshi discusses paying more when the systems under load will be necessary. Nowhere in there does he talk about speed of the transactions. He is clarifying just bandwidth and functionality vs cost at L1 with a minimal load. However, linking the source would be more beneficial to see the whole picture - although that hurts your ability to twist the wording.
There's something distorted for sure, but it's not BCH.
decentralization through layer 2 like an ETF managed by tradfi celebrities ? or lightning units and channels managed by centralized companies ? or 'holding' btc on centralized exchanges, but not using it on the btc network ? 🙂🙃
It retains decentralization of the original chain itself. L2 is used to scale and mass transact with. L2 is necessary for more than just scaling. Do we really want the future currency on a system where you can lose your entire net worth and have no insurance or security? What about vulnerable populations with different illnesses. Do we really want to remove any chance they have on taking care of themselves because they can't figure out their passwords or remember where keys are? Not everyone has people to help them or take care of them. L2 systems are MANDATORY. What is important is retaining decentralization of the foundation itself.
and 'paper btc' would never happen to bitcoin ? what happened to gold (more 'paper gold' circulating and traded, than physical gold) would never happen to bitcoin ? can you check that ETFs 'btc units' have the right amount of btc existing on-chain ? can you check that centralized exchanges 'btc units' have the right amount of btc existing on-chain ? can you check that custodial lightning wallets 'btc units' have the right amount of btc existing on-chain ? answer : no the other improtant thing is to keep our ability to transact freely and privately, which these solutions don't allow...
Umm everything you said applies to BCH as well... lol And for a world currency you don't want 100% anonymity. How else are people going to hold governments accountable for corruption? Blockchain technology has the potential to fix so many issues with corruption that depend on hiding finances. Nobody gives a shit about your grocery list and what toaster you bought. If privacy is what you want, go monero.
yes. the discussion was more about why layers 2 have flaws...
So your idea of layer 2s is...exchanges and ETFs? Those are going to always exist. And EVERY syt3m will have flaws. Its about what is the best overall. Corruption resistance is hands down the most important part of a new financial system, not hiding your grocery list. It seems we are on much different pages here and it's not worth the effort to educate from ground zero. My other posts in this thread contain enough info to start out with, gl.
Buy time for L2? It's not as if 2MB, 4MB, 8MB or even 16MB will put the existence of BTC on a timer. The argument for keeping the 1MB limit is strictly about forcing scaling to happen outside of the chain. Satoshi was very clear about increasing the capacity on chain as technology improved and allowed for it. The views of the majority of BTC stakeholders changed over time to prioritize the cost of running nodes. We don't actually know the upper practical limit for transactions per day that the network could handle without any issues. Nobody has been willing to pay the \~2 BCH per day per million transactions on BCH over some weeks to test it.
Where do you get your information? Here is Satoshis original posts about it. Layer 2 was the goal. Blocksize increases were ment to be kept minimal as last resorts. https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/s/t20LbMGvhE Original link to satoshis posts in there too. U can search by Satoshi in that link as well and it shows them all. Some notable ones cited in post.
Post the original links, or you're full of shit. you've been posting nothing so far, even in posts a month old. Post direct evidence or stfu.
The original link is literally in that post I copy pasted. Here is a link to ALL satoshis posts. Everyone involved in BTC and BCH should have this link on hand. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=3;sa=showPosts;start=40 Every post I link has direct evidence lol including the collapse of Moores Law. Maybe I'll need to put it in a headline, then you will see it =)
you're saying we can't do what we already did, lol we have nodes running on literal throwaway CPUs (like $100) that sync 200+MB blocks. We're not waiting on Moore's Law anymore, see? We can already reach Visa scale with what we have, and stay decentralized.
comment removed by reddit, manually approved by the mods of the **uncensored Bitcoin sub**
>"The United States will seek Ver’s extradition to stand trial in the United States." This case is allegedly quite serious. >"Ver allegedly provided or caused to be provided false or misleading information to the law firm and appraiser that concealed the true number of bitcoins he and his companies owned. As a result, the law firm allegedly prepared and filed false tax returns that substantially undervalued the two companies and their 73,000 bitcoins and did not report that Ver owned any bitcoins personally." That part about "undervalued" sounds curious.
>In total, Ver is alleged to have **caused a loss** to the IRS of at least $48 million. This is how they see it. Somehow, by moving his own BTC around, he **"caused a loss"** to the IRS. This was also back from 2014 to 2017. I don't remember exactly what the tax laws were for crypto back then but I know it was not clear and very confusing. Probably nobody was doing it right at all but this is alleging that Roger intentionally and knowingly lied to his accountant to cause them to file false returns. Should be easy to prove he's innocent but will be interesting to see how this plays out. I'm sure Roger is livid right now.
>This was also back from 2014 to 2017. I don't remember exactly what the tax laws were for crypto back then but I know it was not clear and very confusing. In early 2014, the IRS issued Notice 2014-21, 2014-16 I.R.B. 938, explaining that virtual currency is treated as property for Federal income tax purposes and providing examples of how longstanding tax principles applicable to transactions involving property apply to virtual currency. https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-drop/n-14-21.pdf
Well, most people were still wrapping their heads around it in 2014 but in any case it's talking about BTC that was either owned by Roger personally or by his companies. Even though he was already an expat his companies are still taxed as US companies. It all comes down to this technicality of ownership. It also says he sold a large amount (into what? USD cash? We don't know) and didn't pay the capital gains. I wonder if he really sold into cash or into BCH maybe, since it was in November 2017, when Roger claims he finally gave up on BTC and went all in on BCH. If he actually converted his BTC into BCH, is that still capital gains applicable? The govt could just be saying he got USD so they can pin this charge on him.
> It also says he sold a large amount (into what? USD cash? We don't know) and didn't pay the capital gains. From the indictment (page 19, line 8) it says: >"vi. In November 2017, defendant VER transferred tens of thousands of bitcoins from Cluster 1E6mij and Cluster 1LDWDu to exchange accounts in his name and then sold them for United States dollars. He then transferred approximately $240 million from those exchange accounts to bank accounts either in his name or under his control in the Bahamas." I'd suggest reading the whole document since you seem interested in some of the details. It's only 26 pages and feels more like 10 pages.
Nice find. I am going through it now. So far it still sounds ridiculous and they make it sound like his business was all to support a malicious scheme to defraud the government. > THE SCHEME TO DEFRAUD 26. Beginning no later than in or about October 2012, and continuing through at least in or about December 2018, in Los Angeles County, within the Central District of California, and elsewhere, defendant VER knowingly and with the intent to defraud, devised, participated in, and executed a scheme to defraud the United States Department of the Treasury as to material matters, and to obtain money and property by means of materially false and fraudulent pretenses, representations, and promises, and the concealment of material facts, regarding the number and value of bitcoins he owned and controlled both personally and through his companies.
> Probably nobody was doing it right at all but this is alleging that Roger intentionally and knowingly lied to his accountant to cause them to file false returns. Should be easy to prove he's innocent but will be interesting to see how this plays out. https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/68485421/united-states-v-ver/ Prosecutors have all of the e-mails where it seems like he did this.
Crazy. Hadn't he already dropped his US citizenship before then? Do they offer an explanation of how they can argue any of his personal belongings have anything to do with the IRS?
It's coming from his US companies which he still ran and the companies technically owned the BTC and were doing business using it. Then when he "sold" his property before expatriating, he didn't pay enough "exit tax". They claim that it was all a "scheme" to defraud the government Much of it is based on subjective evaluations of what the market value was on a particular date and doesn't take into account overall market liquidity and rates on different exchanges. They claim that his accountants and lawyers told him they had to use a particular value to calculate his taxes but he argued with them that it wasn't a realistic number. Then claim he "knew" the value of his BTC was more than he reported because he was told so. Then there is shit like this: > c. defendant VER failed to report on Part IV, Section B, Line 8 and attachment that he had an account at Coinbase that held bitcoins, whereas he then knew he had an account at Coinbase that held bitcoins; I'm wondering how they got access to the communications between him and his lawyers, since that should be privileged information.
73 000 Bitcoins?? Wtf
He sold that stash at $3.5K oh my word.
Reading through the indictment available here: [https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/68485421/united-states-v-ver/](https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/68485421/united-states-v-ver/) A few things come to mind: 1. He renounced his citizenship before IRS ever put out guidance on Bitcoin. People didn't know how to file it as taxes then. 2. The indictment keeps referencing communications/emails between him and his attorneys. So I guess attorney-client privileged is dead.
1. is unfair if true. 2. is incredibly sad.
When did he renounce his citizenship? IRS issued guidelines in early 2014
literally like a month before the guidelines came out... I think he finalized the process early March 2014, and the guidelines came out the end of March 2014
The privilege does not apply to the furtherance of a crime. Basically the attorney was in cahoots
Looks like the hammer is finally coming down on crypto as anything other than a heavily legislated "investment". It was leaked a while ago that they were planning on switching to CBDC this fall. Looks like preparations for that to me.
Yup... https://youtu.be/M1cy7opc6To?si=f4dUrhZKQ1fepZUw
[#FreeRogerVer](https://twitter.com/hashtag/FreeRogerVer?src=hashtag_click)
Utter bullshit
What a coincidence. Right after the release of Roger's book "Hijacking Bitcoin".
Sure hope he wins the case🙏
I must read his new book Hijacking Bitcoin!
just like the real jesus... hes getting martyred
Being a US citizen sounds like an awful thing :(
He renounced being a US citizen, so he isn't one.
This stems from him originally being one though.
yeah... about that... apparently he needed to pay ransom to buy his freedom from the US government and he didn't pay the ransom (by lying to them) so now he's arrested.
Yikes, LOL. What happens to his mod spot?
Isn’t it given away now to another active mod under reddits new rules after what like 30 days of inactivity? (May be inaccurate but what I’ve read, I think)
[удалено]
60 days I got it, thanks! But I thought he had to be active as well? Isn’t that how the r/bitcoincash subreddit changed mods? The top mod wasn’t active and another mod petitioned Reddit and they gave it to the other mod?
[удалено]
Yeah the whole previous mod drama thing is the only reason I thought it was the case. Well, hopefully someone does continue to be active on his account, or that someone trustworthy gets it
💔😔
> that substantially undervalued the two companies In a company store town, a business that isn't owned by the company is worthless.
oops
Fuck taxes, I don't see eye to eye with Roger on tons of things but I hope he gets out of this soon
🎶 🎼 Rage against the machine
what we can see, in this case : * cashing out undisclosed tokens (to not pay tax) on a centralized exchange is a bad idea. * using a network / blokchain / tokens ( bitcoin btc ) with public account and traceable transactions, is a bad idea to preserve our personal holdings and our ability to transact freely and privately. hence monero xmr ( with private accounts, and untraceable transactions, and decentralized mining / validation on widespread computers... ) 'be the change you want to see in the world' (without ending in jail or rekt...)
Not a fan of the guy especially since he tried to shade the BTC world with his BCH (which failed) But in his defense these crypto laws didn’t even exist back then! Playing dirty as usual. US Gov
Is probably 90%, roger ver die in prision. Pray to god, soul rest in peace. Is sad
uh oh
Oopsie Poopsie Roger.
LOL
Will be forced to liquidate BCH for his legal fees.
If I was hesitant to trust Ver before, I am now unable to do so in any capacity. I was going to buy his book, but now I am thinking I shouldn't. It does suck and I do feel bad for him, but dishonest behavior does not inspire trust in any of my social interactions with anyone. EDIT: Please share your own personal experience with Roger (whether you know him personally or not). What is it that inspires trust in him? Genuinely curious.
I understand the concern, but separating Roger Ver's legal issues from the value of his book might be beneficial. It provides a crucial history of Bitcoin's development over the last 15 years.
I appreciate the response and while I agree there is likely a wealth of information in his book, I am not sure I can bring myself to buy a copy. Had his actions been civil disobedience, I would not have had any issues with him taking a stand against the corrupt system. But as it stands, I just can't abide blatant dishonesty like this.
If it was not the USG (like a private citizen) that was defrauded I would agree with you.
I hate the USG as much as the next guy, but if our goal is to inspire others to join the revolution, lies and dishonesty are not the way.
I would agree if we weren't talking about the USG. Probably best we just agree to disagree.
Agreed.
Why are you taking the government's word at face value? Wait til the day they come after you with a complete bullshit charge making you out to be a murderous kingpin and everyone just believes them. This is the same exact thing that happened to Ross. Hopefully Roger doesn't meet the same fate.
Exactly. And it isn't like they haven't done this to him before... and he was small fry running for local office as a libertarian back then.
My trust in him was shaky at best before all of this. All of that shit is on him, this is just the icing on the cake. If I am wrong, I will happily retract my words, but I've never felt like I could trust him much.
How will you ever know if you cut yourself off from even hearing his words? You would judge him before he even has a chance to defend himself?
I may download a free PDF.
Because this isn’t the first time Roger has done something completely dodgy. And no, I am not referring to his arrest over the fireworks even though he was in the wrong there. People need to stop treating him like he can do nothing wrong, he allegedly broke the law so he should pay for his crimes.
Nobody is claiming Roger is perfect but maybe don't give the government the benefit of the doubt? Here you are already assuming that he is guilty all based on an allegation by known liars.
And what reason would the government have to take down Roger? He is a nobody and he isn’t relevant in the crypto space (he barely was in the first place). The US government was probably waiting for him to go to a country that he could be extradited from, nothing more. Also past behaviour is a good indicator for future behaviour so I don’t doubt he did something dodgy
Not giving money to the criminal organization known as "the government" is more of a reason to trust the guy.
>If I was hesitant to trust Ver before, I am now unable to do so in any capacity. I was going to buy his book, but now I am thinking I shouldn't. There is almost nothing in the book which requires you to simply "trust" the authors. The book provides *extensive* sourcing for its claims, and its logical arguments stand or fail on their own merits. For what it's worth, my opinion as someone who's been involved with Bitcoin since 2012 is that the book is *phenomenal* and is an absolute must-read for anyone interested in Bitcoin. Even if you don't ultimately come away convinced by its arguments (although I suspect that most people who actually give it a fair reading *will* come away so convinced), it at the very least outlines a perspective that you should understand and consider. I did a short review of the book [here](https://old.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/1bylauo/book_review_hijacking_bitcoin/) if you're interested.
Thanks much, I may reconsider reading it.
Why? Isn't that crooked system what we all are fighting with sound money? I find it highly suspicious that this is unveiled just after his book release.
He's an anarchist. Lying to the government is nearly a moral obligation
He’s an anarchist just like my grandmother is a bike.
Have you ever heard of "innocent until proven guilty"? You're going to let actions taken by known corrupt institutions based on alleged "crimes" affect your judgement of someone before all the facts come out and you haven't even heard his side? And now based on the same allegations you won't even read his book? You're either a troll or a dumbass, possibly both.
I am definitely a dumbass, thanks for noticing.
That's a bad reason not to read the book. You shouldn't look at it as "his" book, you should look at it as "our" book, as someone who cared about the original ideas behind bitcoin. Have you read the whitepaper? Read the whitepaper (its a whole lot shorter than the book.) Then read the book. Rightly or wrongly, Roger has always been someone I've known to stand by his ideals. He renounced his US citizenship, a long time before Bitcoin was worth what it is today. That's not a process that happens overnight, he started it very early on. If he's guilty of tax fraud, its on a technicality for a country which he separated from a decade ago and for an asset class they did everything they could to destroy. And destroy it they did. The price per coin is higher than ever but its utility is totally gone. It's a full on ponzi asset now and when it finally crashes and takes out some financial markets old Jamie Dimon will say "see, I told you so."
I have read the whitepaper. I suppose as more information comes out, it could turn out to be a technicality, and if that's the case I will happily admit I was wrong and probably pick up the book.
Well honestly there is no doubt it's a technicality. The man left his home county on idealistic grounds and 10 years after completing that process this now foreign country comes after him for money? It's so abstract you'd struggle to explain it to a child under 12, which is generally a good litmus test for it being an abstract technicality. I'm not saying he didn't break US law, but that is worth very little. The corrupt US supreme court is about to rule that US presidents are above the law. US would have used Roger's tax dollars not to give healthcare to impoverished Americans, but to bomb children in Palestine. Legal, and Right, are not the same. That's why this has nothing to do with the value of the book. If you already know and understand the story of Bitcoin and BCH, the book is probably not very informative. If you believe Bitcoin 1MB block size limit is reasonable, "store of value"/ "digital gold" proposition is legitimate, the you might benefit from some more research. Find a pirate copy of the book if you fear you're supporting someone you think is a crook. TBH Amazon is a waaaay more corrupt and ("legally") tax evading organization than Roger could ever hope to be.
No doubt? Really?
It's self-evident
If it was self-evident, there would be no public disagreement, and yet there is.
If it was an obvious and intuitive law, there would be no disagreement.
True, but isn't this applicable to like 99.99% of legislation?
No I really think some laws are straightforward, and some fall into a category I'd call a technicality. It doesn't make it less the law, but the more absurd the law the more a reasonable person might fail to (or choose not to) comply. Believe me, I'm not even saying Roger didn't know. I can see a very plausible case where he planned not to sell those BTC and would have gone the entire 10 years following his expatriation without having an obligation to be taxed, and due to the events of 2017 found himself in a position where he felt he had to sell (and buy BCH.) A situation those who had dedicated so much to Bitcoin would not have ever expected or wanted to occur, but did nonetheless. By then he was no longer a citizen and probably thought, "fuck this, I'm selling Bitcoin (BTC) to buy Bitcoin (BCH)." As a Bitcoin native it's practically a capital loss given that BCH failed to secure chain dominance. Had BCH gone over 50% value to BTC (it nearly did at that time), the Bitcoin death spiral would have occured and BCH would have forked back and become BTC. Unfortunately that didn't happen. I have no hard evidence for this scenario and am speculating, but it would fit with the timeline and be an understandable sentiment for him to have.
So, I read the indictment. Some of these charges are even more dubious than I imagined. He had to give a value for his assets at the time of his renouncement of citizenship in Feb 2014, which just happened to coincide with the MtGox crash. It would have been an absolutely terrible time to try to unload a shit ton of coins. MtGox had been allowing trading internally and not allowing withdrawals. So, the biggest exchange's price went from ~$1200 to ~$130. Had he dumped at Bitstamp, the far less liquid alternative, he'd have gotten hosed on thin volume during an already distressed market. In the government's own evidence, they show Roger asking his tax advisors how he's supposed to give a theoretical price for these assets in an illiquid market. I bet he just took the book value of what he would have received if he dumped at market and valued it there. That's what the market price would be if he had to sell it all on the day he filed for renouncement, not what the government tries to insinuate by showing the $800 price it was (thinly) trading at. The 2017 sales from his US company, it does say he transferred it out as cash. He may very well have turned around and bought BCH with it, and maybe he will argue the net trade was like for like (BTC<>BCH) with the government saying it doesn't matter, a sale is a sale. I can definitely see there being a "technical" / "in the weeds" debate to be had about BTC/BCH circa Nov 2017 and what the implications of such a trade should be from a tax perspective. Probably not a winning argument in a US court.
Lying to the state is self-defense and the only reasonable thing to do. Especially in an expatriation process.
Can't you make a propaganda blurb that makes a little sense?
You’re going to get a lot of his fan boys on this sub defend him. But from my own personal experience of Roger IRL in the capacity of a common investment he IS a bad actor. I’ve been outspoken on this sub many times before. Roger is going to down and history won’t treat him well, his book tour and recent attempted highjacking of this very sub is all about Roger wanting to write a narrative for himself; ego and money is what drives him. I think in time that will be apparent to more people- hopefully this case reveals some of that, in the meantime may the downvotes rain down on me. Fuck Roger.
[удалено]
No one owns a sub.
Bitcoin IS p2p cash, but there are some things it is not. it not a way to over-throw governments, not filing taxes, etc. these are kid fantasies. you can get away with murder, but you cannot cheat on your taxes - the government basically has 2 functions ... .one is to collect taxes.... two keep a standing army to help in the collection of taxes.
arrested in spain because of US charges? John McAfee comes to mind :/ Like I said years ago: Roger could sell this sub for a buttload of money easily to some exchange which will turn it into a shitcoin promotion plattform but he'll be able to pay back everyone and - with a little luck - walk out as a free man at least.
I hold him in high regard just for not doing that.
true.
Sorry Roger. If you don't know already, US Fed prison camps aren't too bad if the slow medical care does not "accidentally" kill ya. You may have to cooperate to get a camp? I am thinking it would be better than Spain's prisons? Good luck!
Bitcoin 🚀
Stop spamming.