Roger Ver at the LeWeb13 Conference at Central Hall in Westminster - London (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/)

A man known for investing early in Bitcoin cryptocurrency and renouncing his US citizenship compared the United States to Nazi Germany on Memorial Day.

Silicon Valley-born Bitcoin Investor and Roger Keith Ver criticized the saluting of flags and the recital of the Pledge of Allegiance on Twitter Monday, claiming that “Saluting a flag blindly while reciting the pledge under orders is not patriotism, that’s called idiocy. #MemorialDay.”

The tweet’s accompanying photo showed pre-World War II students in America saluting the US flag by way of the “Bellamy salute,” an open-palm salute that originated in the 1800s but fell out of favor when the fascist powers of Nazi Germany and Italy adopted a similar salute (taking inspiration from the ancient Romans).

Ver also made a point to tag the official U.S. Army and Marine Corps Twitter pages.

Saluting a flag blindly while reciting the pledge under orders is not patriotism, that’s called idiocy. #MemorialDay pic.twitter.com/Ef5M4IMP76 — Roger Ver (@rogerkver) May 28, 2018

A resident of Tokyo and a citizen of the tiny West Indies nation of Saint Kitts and Nevis, Ver renounced his US citizenship in 2014 and was famously denied a re-entry visa to enter the USA the following year.

Ver -who donated over $20,000 to antiwar.com- is an anarcho-capitalist and voluntaryist (fringe sectors of libertarianism), believing government intervention should be replaced by voluntary human interactions in the free market.



The eccentric individual made significant financial gains through his early adoption of Bitcoin and is estimated to be worth 52 million dollars.