Roger Ver, aka “Bitcoin Jesus,” asserted that the Ethereum ecosystem is the primary force for global crypto adoption and praised the blockchain’s co-founder Vitalik Buterin for “pushing humankind into the future.”
Roger Ver, an early Bitcoin investor and a prominent advocate of Bitcoin Cash (BCH), stated that Ethereum (ETH), not Bitcoin (BTC), will be the main driver of new users to the crypto space.
In a May 31 episode of the Show Me The Crypto Podcast, Ver said Ethereum has more innovation and activity than Bitcoin, despite its scaling challenges.
“Ethereum doesn’t have the biggest market cap compared to Bitcoin; I think Ethereum is the front-runner in terms of driving worldwide adoption,”
Ver applauded the development of Ethereum Virtual Machine-compatible (EVM) blockchains and layer-2 scaling solutions such as Polygon (MATIC) that can help reduce the congestion and fees on the main chain.
He also credited Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin for his vision and leadership in creating a platform that facilitates smart contracts, decentralized applications, and non-fungible tokens (NFTs).
The Bitcoin civil war
Ver recounted the history of the “civil war” that erupted in the early days of Bitcoin between Buterin and the Bitcoin core developers.
According to him, Buterin wanted to use Bitcoin as a platform for more than just currency or a store of value, but he faced resistance from the developers who wanted to keep Bitcoin simple and secure.
“All of that would have been built on top of Bitcoin if not for the scaling civil war that happened. These Bitcoin core developers hate Vitalik, and they basically drove him from the project to go and create Ethereum, and more power to him for that,”
Ver also expressed his disappointment with Ledger’s controversial ‘Recover’ service, which allows users to recover their lost keys through a custodian.
He said that while it is permissible for individuals to have custodial accounts, the essence of crypto is to have full control and responsibility over one’s assets.
Several legal disputes have entangled Ver in recent months. In January, he was sued by a trading unit of Genesis, a crypto lending firm, for failing to pay $20.8 million in unsettled crypto options.
Ver claimed he had enough funds to spend but argued that he was not obligated to because Genesis was insolvent.
CoinFLEX CEO Mark Lamb accused him of defaulting on a $47 million (USDC) debt in June 2020. Ver denied these allegations without naming CoinFLEX.
Ver is one of the most influential figures in the crypto space, having invested in many early-stage projects such as Coinbase, BitPay, Kraken, and Ripple.
