Roger Keith Ver celebrates his birthday today, he was born 41 years ago in San Jose, California. Roger was one of the first promoters and investors in bitcoin and got nicknamed “Bitcoin Jesus”, whereas in recent years he has become the main reference point for Bitcoin Cash (BCH).

Born and raised in Silicon Valley, Ver has experienced many ups and downs, including a short stay in prison in 2002 due to selling explosives on eBay. After serving his sentence, he moved to Japan in 2005.

In the 2000s, after founding MemoryDealers at the age of 19, a company that is still active today, he threw himself into politics by running for the California State Assembly for the libertarian party.

His interest in bitcoin began in 2011, making his first investment in Charlie Shrem‘s Bitinstant, and then moving on to bigger investments: we are talking about several million dollars, invested in several startups such as Blockchain.info, Bitpay, Kraken and Ripple itself.

The following year, along with other personalities in the industry, Ver founded the Bitcoin Foundation, dedicated to spreading and promoting the asset as an innovative payment method and in contrast to traditional fiat.

Roger Ver: Bitcoin Cash and Bitcoin.com

Up until last year the CEO of Bitcoin.com, a website that first focused on bitcoin and then, following the 2017 fork, on Bitcoin Cash (BCH), considered by Ver to be more interesting as it has the potential to become a real payment method due to its low fees and very fast transactions – faster than BTC.

To date, he has been replaced as CEO of Bitcoin.com by Stefan Rust, while still remaining at the top of the company.

As mentioned, he also had his share of misadventures: giving up his American citizenship for that of Saint Kitts and Nevis did not make it easy for him to travel to the US, whereas last year he was refused a visa to visit Australia.

Another interesting detail is his passion for Brazilian jiu-jitsu, a form of martial art.