Toward the end of our hour-long interview, Bitcoin.com founder Roger Ver drops a bombshell: He had considered killing himself to escape a jail sentence at the age of 23.<\/b><\/p>\n
Even for the most freedom-loving libertarian, this seems extreme. But Ver had worked out a way to escape his own death by having himself cryonically preserved, to be revived at a later date. <\/span> \u201cIt\u2019ll freeze your body in a big giant vat of liquid nitrogen when you die, in the hopes that future medical technology will be able to fix whatever it is that caused you to die in the first place \u2014 plus the damage caused by freezing,\u201d he explains:<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cAnd so in fact, I even considered \u2014 suicide isn\u2019t the right word \u2014 but I considered killing myself temporarily, going into cryonic suspension and then coming out later, when the technology is better, to avoid going to prison. That\u2019s how upset I was about going to jail.\u201d<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Now 42, and with a fortune he vaguely refers to as being in the billions, the Bitcoin Cash proponent intends to switch his investment focus to cryonics over the next decade, in the hopes of improving the experimental technology.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cRather than investing in cryptocurrency stuff, I want to focus on the extreme life extension technologies because if you die, you can\u2019t enjoy your life anymore,\u201d he says. At various points during our conversation, Ver refers to his mission with a well-rehearsed tagline about helping build the tools to give people control over their own money (or variations thereof). <\/span> If Ver gets run over by a bus tomorrow, there\u2019s a card in his wallet and notes on his phone with instructions to immediately get in touch with Alcor to freeze his body, with the hope of eventual resurrection. \u201cThat\u2019s certainly my hope,\u201d he says, adding wryly, \u201cThe downside of that is that the company\u2019s in Arizona, and I’m zipping all over the world.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Ver is currently bunkering down from the pandemic on the French-speaking island of St. Barts in the Caribbean, where it\u2019s \u201csummer all year round.\u201d Following his run-in with United States authorities, he renounced his U.S. citizenship in 2014 and became a citizen of St. Kitts and Nevis. He spends a lot of time in neighboring Antigua, where he convinced businesses from gas stations to supermarkets to accept BCH. You can now even pay the $158,000 required to become a citizen in crypto.<\/span><\/p>\n Compared with 2017 and 2018, when Ver seemed to be everywhere arguing the case for big blocks and peer-to-peer cash, he\u2019s been a lot less prominent lately. \u201cI absolutely made a deliberate decision to do less media stuff,\u201d he says. \u201cThat civil war is kind of over now. So, I don\u2019t think I need to argue with words so much as build useful things for people around the world to use.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n He\u2019s still pretty active behind the scenes though, playing an instrumental role in convincing <\/span>Kim Dotcom to embrace Bitcoin Cash<\/span><\/a> for his K.im content monetization platform.<\/span><\/p>\n Speaking to Bitcoin maximalist Tone Vays (who was decidedly unimpressed), Dotcom <\/span>revealed<\/span><\/a> that Ver had won him over. \u201cHe shared with me some of the innovations that he\u2019s working on. I think the guy at the moment, in terms of his way of thinking and where he is in his innovation, is a step ahead. I feel it would be stupid to ignore someone like that.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n It sounds as if Ver may have also extolled the virtues of Bitcoin Cash to Tesla CEO Elon Musk, but he\u2019s reluctant to confirm this.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cI hate to be coy, but I\u2019m not going to comment on that question. I\u2019m happy to talk about just about everything, but that\u2019s one that I think we\u2019ll have to save for another time.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Well, that\u2019s not a \u201cNo,\u201d is it?<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Elon Musk and Kim Dotcom talk Bitcoin Cash low fees!! Does Bitcoin high transaction fees matter? #bitcoin<\/a> #BitcoinCash<\/a> @elonmusk<\/a> @KimDotcom<\/a> https:\/\/t.co\/BbeVkDbUUl<\/a> pic.twitter.com\/UkvLapITD4<\/a><\/p>\n — Ryan Giffin (@RyanMic87079594) March 29, 2021<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
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\n<\/span>At 20 years old, Ver had already signed up with Arizona life extension company Alcor to be frozen after death, long before he was handed a 10-month prison stretch in 2002 for selling firecrackers on eBay.<\/span><\/p>\n
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\n<\/span>Riffing on this, he says his new focus will be to \u201cbuild the tools that enable people to have as much time as they need in their lives to do the things that they enjoy, and spend it with the people they care about.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\nParadise in the pandemic<\/span><\/h4>\n
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