All Episodes
Previous Next
Feb. 3, 2025 - Viva & Barnes
01:06:12
Live with "Bitcoin Jesus" Roger Ver - the Indictment, Law-Fare and the War on Crypto
| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
We'll be responding to the U.S. trade action with 25% tariffs against $155 billion worth of American goods.
This will include immediate tariffs on $30 billion worth of goods as of Tuesday, followed by further tariffs on $125 billion worth of American products in 21 days' time to allow Canadian companies and
supply chains I can't stand listening to this guy a second longer than we have to,
but there was a reason why we're starting with the wretch-worthy Justin Trudeau.
My joke to Justin Trudeau yesterday was, have you tried freezing Donald Trump's bank account?
Maybe that'll get the results that you want.
We'll talk about the Canadian stuff later, and I suspect it's going to be news for the week in any event.
But I am predicting that Canada will buckle, much like Colombia, much like Venezuela.
But you got Justin Trudeau talking about reprisal tariffs against the United States as if we have equals punching each other.
You know, it's like Mike Tyson versus...
Evander Holyfield, except it's more like Mike Tyson and me punching at Mike and saying, hey, Mike, I'm fighting back.
All right.
The bottom line to all of this, the joke was, have you tried freezing his bank accounts because Justin Trudeau, the tyrant that he is, did that during the trucker protest, which very much highlighted, illustrated the need for financial independence, financial autonomy, which many people believe is brought to you by way of Bitcoin.
Which many people believe is the reason why the governments across the world are waging something of a war, or at least trying to establish their own Bitcoin, which is otherwise known as central digitalized banking currency, so they can really control you and really shut off the spigots of your bank accounts when they so choose.
The whole segue to this, people, is that we've got Roger Veer and his representative, Tracy, who's in the stream as well.
And we're going to talk about this because it's something that Robert Barnes and I have been talking about for a while.
You know, he didn't give himself this name.
Some people might think it's borderline sacrilegious, but Bitcoin Jesus is the name, and I know that he doesn't like it, is what they call Roger Veer.
And we've been covering what we feel to be reasonably ascertainable lawfare against Roger Veer.
And we're going to get into it.
I might ask too many questions.
That's where Tracy's going to come in and say this is a pending indictment extradition facing over a century in jail.
We can't answer these questions, but I might ask one too many questions.
We'll see.
And we're going to bring him in in about 30 seconds.
Everybody share the link and bring it around.
The full disclaimer, by the way, so that nobody says whatever.
If you follow Robert Barnes and sportspicks.locals.com, and Robert has been helping people invest in markets, predictive markets.
Would there be pardons for January Sixers?
If so, how many?
There were markets for over 500 on day one, over 1,000 on day one.
And if you had followed Robert's advice on some of these markets, you would have made some pretty decent capital gains on your investment.
The full disclosure for this, I have a current wager that Tulsi Gabbard is going to get confirmed.
The long shot that Bernie Sanders is going to discover his soul and vote for Tulsi Gabbard, 10 to 1 at this point in time.
John Fetterman as well.
And three pardons that I think are going to happen within Trump's first 100 days.
I reserve the right to be wrong.
Eric Adams, Snowden, and Roger Ver.
Those are my predictions.
So that full disclaimer, so that nobody says David's concealing anything or this is self-interested.
I've placed these investments because I think it's the right thing that should happen.
I think politically speaking, it will happen.
But I just wanted to give that disclaimer out there to begin with so that that's it.
Full transparency.
Now, we're going to bring in Roger and Tracy in about five seconds.
You guys ready?
Thumbs up.
And if you don't know the story, you will know the story.
I shared the documentary that Roger put up on the internet.
And you may not know just how far back this story of lawfare goes and the details of it.
And I appreciate there's some politics in the Bitcoin world that I don't understand and I will never understand because I still don't understand Bitcoin.
But we're here.
Roger, Tracy, or I should say Tracy and Roger, thank you very much for being here.
Start from the absolute beginning, Roger, for those who may be discovering you for the first time.
30,000 foot overview, elevator pitch, who are you?
And then we're going to get into how you ended up where you are.
Yeah, I was born and raised in Silicon Valley, been around computers my entire life.
And about 15 years ago, I heard about Bitcoin and it changed my life.
And I went on to be the very first person in the entire world to start investing in Bitcoin startups.
I seeded the entire first generation of Bitcoin businesses trying to make this usable for people all over the world.
So like we were talking about the Canadian truckers, we were trying to make it so that...
People like them specifically wouldn't be subject to the whims of dictators like Trudeau shutting down their bank accounts because they had a political view that he didn't appreciate.
So the entire goal with cryptocurrencies is to put people in charge of their own money.
And so I've been involved in that nearly 15 years full time now.
But sometimes when you put people in charge of their own things and take away government's power, people in government that think that government is supposed to be the master of the people, they really don't like that.
So I've been the victim of lawfare for...
More than 25 years at this point, because I ran for political office as a libertarian back in the year 2000, called the ATF and FBI some things in reference to burning to death little kids in a church in Waco, Texas.
Yeah, just once you're on their radar, it's hard to ever be off their radar.
And at this point, I'm 46 years old.
I doubt I'll ever be off their radar.
But luckily, we have a new administration that's much, much, much, much friendlier towards cryptocurrency and self-sovereignty and people being in charge of their own lives.
And so I'm hoping they'll be able to see just how vindictive the lawfare being used against me by people who hate freedom and hate America and the Biden administration was.
And hopefully all the charges will be dropped or there'll be a crimp to pardon or whatever it takes to get these fake charges out of my life.
Have enough to deal with already without fake charges from the government continuing to this very day.
We're going to get there.
And if I was smirking, it wasn't because of...
I know what you said about Waco.
And the only reason I'm smirking is I've never met a libertarian who's not eccentric.
So that makes it make...
It makes a little more sense in that sense.
We'll go back because Barnes and I talked about, you know, you going to federal prison for 10 months for selling...
Fireworks which were, you know, destined or repurchased and sold to scare off birds and farms, unless I'm mistaken.
But it starts with you running for the Libertarian Party back in 1999, publicly excoriating the FBI, intelligence, CIA, whatever you want to call it, for the handling of Waco, and then a prosecution for reselling what I understand were bona fide fireworks via buying them on the internet and reselling them, and then they put you in jail for 10 months.
Explain that.
Yeah, so I first saw these firecrackers for sale in Cabela's Sporting Goods Catalog.
It's the biggest sporting goods catalog in the entire United States.
And basically they're just that.
It's a firework that makes noise that farmers can use to scare birds out of the cornfield.
And so I bought them from Cabela's and then saw that I could sell them for more on eBay.
And this is back when eBay was first getting started.
So I buy them from Cabela's and then resell them on eBay.
And then later on, I found the distributor that Cabela's was buying them from and bought them from that distributor and resold them on eBay.
And so I didn't make a huge amount of money selling them.
It was just something as a teenage boy.
Of course, teenage boys love fireworks.
And so like, oh, I can have something I like and make money with it at the same time.
But Cabela's had no license to be selling these.
The manufacturer had no license to be selling these.
The distributors had no license to be selling these.
Nobody thought they needed a license.
In fact, they were marketed in Cabela's, legal in all 50 states.
And so I didn't think I would have any problem with these whatsoever.
And it turned out I was the only person ever in the entire history of the world to ever have any sort of a legal problem for selling these.
And they decided to prosecute me for dealing in explosives without a license.
And a little fun fact is anything having to do with explosives is automatically considered to be a violent felony.
So not only am I a felon in the U.S., I'm a violent felon as well, which has caused all sorts of additional problems in my life since then.
But I wound up signing a plea agreement, agreeing to do between 8 and 14 months in prison.
Whereas if I had taken it to trial and lost, I would have lost because I was guilty of the laws written, even though it was selectively applied in my case.
I would have done seven or eight years in prison.
And my attorney, the U.S. attorney, everybody told me I'd be showing up to what's called a federal prison camp.
And they said it'll be just like going to summer camp, only everybody's older and you'll be there with a bunch of doctors, lawyers, and drug dealers.
Turns out the judge and the prosecutor and my attorney have no say whatsoever as to what security level prison you go to.
And because I was deemed a violent felon, because it had to do with explosives, I went to a Lompoc FCI, so a medium-low security facility, not a minimum security facility.
And definitely not like any summer camp I've ever been to.
I have a whole video up on YouTube talking about my experience there, where a prison guard has literally planted a shank on me.
And for those that don't know and haven't been to prison, a shank is like an improvised knife.
Didn't have the best experience there.
I spent the whole time reading books while I was there.
And then when I got out, I had three years of federal probation where these probation officers harassed me and harassed my business and harassed my friends and family and employees and just caused a nightmare for me for the next three years and literally drove me out of the country.
Literally, the day I was allowed to leave the U.S., I left to stop the harassment that these people were waging against me, this campaign of terror they had going on against me.
And then I stayed silent about politics.
I didn't tell anybody about politics at all until Bitcoin came along.
And Bitcoin was just far too exciting for me not to get involved full time and start telling people, hey, this is going to change the way all of power structures in society work.
Everybody needs to get involved with this right now.
Start using Bitcoin as money.
Learn all about it.
And by investing the money that I had earned from my previous business, people all over the world started paying attention to myself and Bitcoin.
I paid for national radio ads on more than 100 radio stations across the country back in 2011 when Bitcoin was just a few dollars each.
So that's how early I was to the space.
And people that are much newer to Bitcoin, they don't know the history about this and what was going on.
But I invite them, you know, go on Google.
Google's your friend.
You can learn anything you want about it there.
And not to belabor the fireworks, the firecracker thing, what you sold was the Pest Control Report 2000.
Was that the right firecracker?
That's exactly right.
And it is a pest control firecracker that you presumably light to scare off animals.
And they went after you because...
You have to explain the lawfare early on where they said when they're prosecuting you for this...
Explain the context where, who was it?
FBI, CIA, or not CIA, FBI, or one of the ATFs?
Yeah, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, and the FBI.
And so I was invited to debate the Republican to Democratic candidates at the San Jose State University debate there.
And in that debate, I literally called the FBI and ATF a bunch of jackbooted thugs and murderers for murdering, you know, for burning to death little kids.
If you burn to death little kids, even if their parents are, you know, wanted criminals.
You don't burn to death little kids.
Imagine if a robber broke into my house and I try and catch the robber with a gun.
I start shooting up the place and I shoot a bunch of the kids living in the neighbor's house and they die.
I would go to jail forever for murdering little kids even though I was trying to catch a real robber or rapist or some bad guy.
Why is there a double standard when the ATF kills a bunch of kids, even if they're trying to catch actual criminals?
Like, why do they get a free pass for having murdered a whole bunch of kids?
And I think the answer is that they shouldn't.
And if you murder little kids, you're a murderer.
And I said these sort of things in that debate.
And boy, did it make them mad.
And so they started looking into me.
And who is this young guy?
I was, I think, like 20 years old at that point.
And, you know, I already was starting my business in life and had a number of employees.
And things were headed in the right direction.
And so they started.
Looking into me and, hey, what can we prosecute this guy for?
What sort of lawfare can we wage against this guy?
And the thing they found was that I was selling these pest control report 2000 firecrackers.
And even while I was in federal prison for selling these, Cabela's sporting goods catalog was still selling the exact same item.
These other distributors were still selling the exact same item.
The manufacturer was still making them, all of them doing this without a permit.
They were all committing the exact same crime.
That I was in prison for having committed.
And so, yeah, there's a picture from on the screen.
That's exactly what I was telling you.
It does look a little bigger than the firecrackers we used to buy in Chinatown in Montreal when we were kids.
But you're 20 years old.
You have this business going on.
You're running for the Libertarian Party.
Young and Libertarian seem to go hand in hand.
And then they lock you away based on a plea agreement for 10 months.
In conditions that I can only...
First of all, summer camp.
It depends on what camp you go to.
Bad things happen at summer camp.
And prison summer camp sounds like worse things happen there.
You do your 10 months, you get out, and this is now...
We're going to be in like 2000, right?
Give or take?
No, so let's say I went into prison in 2002 because it took some time with the negotiations and this and that.
It was released in 2003.
And one more thing, Viva.
If anyone has any doubt as to whether this was lawfare, there was a meeting between...
Roger, his attorney, the prosecutor, and an agent for the ATF.
And Roger's attorney was talking to the prosecutor saying, look, you're not going after anyone else for this.
Normally you'd just tell my client, go get a license.
You wouldn't be prosecuting him for this.
You'd maybe fine him, but you wouldn't.
We're trying to send him to prison.
What's going on?
And the prosecutor was leaning into that and kind of admitting there was truth to that.
And at that point, the ATF agent pounded his fist on the table and said, but you didn't hear what Roger said about us.
So that clears up completely whether this was lawfare or not.
That is lawfare.
That's pure lawfare.
And this was early.
The meeting wasn't transcribed?
There was no...
No, it was an in-person meeting.
But I was there, saw it with my own eyes.
That's unbelievable.
As a young man hearing that, you have to know in that moment that this agency is not going to be finished with you.
And what you experienced on parole suggested that was...
On probation, yeah, they were harassing me.
But it was because they weren't mad about anything that I had done.
They were mad about the things that I had said.
And so if you think these ideas that they don't like, they'll come after you simply for having the wrong thoughts in your brain.
And that's exactly what this was about.
So actually, I'm interested in the period before you get into Bitcoin.
You're released, say, 2003, 2004.
What happens between then and 2011?
And then we got to get into the time frame in which you leave the country and renounce your citizenship.
But what happens in the period after you're released and up until Bitcoin comes around?
So I had my own business called MemoryDealers.com, and I was selling computer components to people all over the world.
And as part of that business...
I need to be able to go and travel and meet the customers.
I was the main sales guy for that business.
And so I would file request after request to be able to travel to different business meetings for my business.
And remember, before I'd gone to prison, while I was on what's called pre-trial release, the judge had allowed me to travel internationally.
They said, we don't think Mr. Veer poses any flight risk whatsoever, and I could go wherever I wanted, and it wasn't a problem.
Once I got out of prison, I had already served my time.
They're refusing and denying every single travel request I would put in.
And at some point, I compiled a whole spreadsheet.
I think I had submitted something like 70 travel requests, and every single one had been denied.
And so then I had to hire a lawyer to go in front of the court and say, hey, Roger needs to be able to travel for his business.
And to the judge's credit, the judge said, okay, yeah, Roger needs to be able to travel for his business.
Roger, you just need to tell the probation officer where you're going and when you're going.
You don't have to ask him.
You just tell him.
And that really made the probation officer angry there as well.
And just the whole time, he was just so rude and belittling towards me.
And literally, he told me to my face that, oh, you're much too dangerous to be allowed to go anywhere that would require flying on an airplane.
And I go, who do you think I am?
I'm just a computer nerd who likes computers.
I sell computer parts over the Internet.
And they were just...
Over and over and over again, just rude and demeaning and belittling towards me.
And another example of that, my business in Silicon Valley there, we had a break in one night.
Somebody literally crashed a car through the roll-up door at my business, and they came in and they stole more than a million dollars worth of computer parts.
And I'm thinking, oh, you know, fantastic.
After I found the parts, I found who had my stolen parts a couple weeks later.
I think, fantastic.
I call the local police and I say, hey, I found the parts that were stolen.
They did nothing.
The parts were down in LA at that point.
I called the LAPD.
They did nothing.
I called the FBI.
They did nothing.
They did absolutely nothing, yet I had spent a whole bunch more money fortifying my office building so that I wouldn't have another break-in again and wouldn't have more parts.
They then sent the Santa Clara Police Department out telling me I have to undo all the locks and take off the different doors and the different security devices I put in place because they said, oh, it's a fire hazard if all the doors can be locked at night.
They're harassing me over that, but they won't go and get back the parts they've been stolen from me.
It was just month after month, year after year of harassment from these people.
It just drove me nuts.
And here I am, you know, 20 years later, still frustrated by the whole experience.
The warfare against you by the IRS started during that time period, too.
I got audited over and over and over again by both federal and state agencies.
And every year I passed with flying colors because I knew if you cross these people, they will ruin your life.
And so my instructions to all of my CFO and my tax accountants and everybody.
We have to do everything perfectly.
I know I'm a target.
Let's do everything perfectly all the time.
And that had been my MO for years and years and years.
And everything was fine until I guess that brings us to why I'm on your show here today.
The current IRS indictment, it's literally a pack full of lies because they know I did everything properly and they literally had to lie in the indictment in order to try and even have any sort of an indictment at all against me because my instructions to my tax attorneys and tax accountants and all the people who work for me is...
Do everything perfect.
I know I'm a giant target for the IRS.
I know they're going to audit me.
We have to do everything perfect.
And we did do everything to the absolute very best of our ability.
And that's why the IRS literally had to lie in their indictment to get their indictment across.
We're going to get to that, by the way.
And everybody in the chat and say, okay, it's self-serving what Roger's going to say, yada, yada.
Fine, you can go read the indictment.
I've read the indictment.
I didn't get to read the motion to dismiss.
But I've got the thorough gist of it.
But before we even get there...
So 2011, you start getting into Bitcoin.
When do you decide you got to up and leave the country?
I left the country literally the day I was allowed to.
So I left the country in 2006 because of all the lawfare being waged against me.
And then when I heard about Bitcoin, and I looked into renouncing my citizenship at that point because it was so scary for me to be an American with them constantly harassing me.
And then when Bitcoin came along, I knew I was going to be involved in Bitcoin and spread this to the world.
It became even more frightening to be an American at that point.
And so that's when I started the process of renouncing my citizenship because I thought it was the only safe thing that I could do to end the lawfare against me was to not be an American and not live in the U.S. because they are constantly harassing me year after year after year.
And that's interesting.
So you renounce your citizenship, give or take...
I started the process in 2011 and it didn't finish until 2014.
So February 4th, 2014 was the actual day.
And something your viewers should remember is that America has golden handcuffs.
The only way, if the IRS is after you, if the IRS is your enemy, if the IRS is engaged in lawfare against you, the only way that you can get out from under it is not leaving the country.
It's renouncing your citizenship.
That is the only way you can get out from under the thumb of the IRS.
And so for Roger, given that there was IRS lawfare against him and his family, where his family was getting audited too, dating back all the way to that ill-fated debate where he called out the IRS as well, the only way you can possibly get out from under that, unfortunately, is to give up your U.S. citizenship.
And so for him, it was a really hard decision for you to make.
It was a sad decision for you to make.
There was no other way.
It's not because I hate America.
It's because I'm afraid of these bureaucrats that hate American values that were targeting me because I was supporting literally the ideals that America was founded upon.
I have not renounced my Canadian citizenship, but I'm someone who left Canada or was, I better say, chased out of Canada and found freedom in the free state of Florida.
And incidentally, we have a deemed disposition of assets at the corporate level when you leave the country as well.
And so I can very much understand what went down.
How the laws might be different in terms of what they call the exit tax.
So you're operating what are still American-based companies.
Are they, in fact, they are American-based companies, right?
Or at least they're headquartered?
They're American-based branches and I had overseas branches as well.
Okay. And so you renounce citizenship, give or take 2014.
Is it at that point that the argument is now you've exited the country and therefore there's a so-called exit tax that you need to pay to the IRS?
Kind of.
At that time, there were literally no rules or guidance or any instructions whatsoever in any way, shape, or form.
Not a single word from the U.S. government on how to pay taxes on Bitcoin.
So not only was I the very first person in the world to start investing in the Bitcoin ecosystem, I was one of the very first people in the entire world to try and pay taxes on their Bitcoin assets as well.
And so at the time I renounced, you're supposed to pay taxes on your net worth, global net worth.
In 2014, Mt.
Gox had just collapsed.
The worldwide global trade volume for Bitcoin was less than $10 million a day.
So it wasn't anything even remotely like what it is today.
And most people today weren't around in Bitcoin in 2014, so they have no idea.
They just assume, oh, it was probably about the same in 2014 as it was today.
If you bought or sold $100,000 worth of Bitcoin in 2014, the market price would swing wildly up or down depending on if you were buying or selling.
There was almost no liquidity for Bitcoin back then.
I was literally one of the very first people in the world trying to do it right because I knew I was going to be a target and I wanted to do everything right.
So I hired multiple layers.
I had my own accountant who worked for me in my business.
I had the CPAs and tax accounts that checked everything.
And then I literally hired former federal prosecutors to take a look at all the different other people in the chain.
So I had actually four separate layers of people going and double-checking everything to make sure that everything was correct.
And at the end of the day, everybody thought that everything was correct and did everything to the best of their ability.
And even looking back on it in hindsight, I think we did a really, really good job.
And the IRS is just plain lying and going after me with a political lawfare that hopefully can come to an end very, very soon because I've lost a huge amount of time and money and effort.
And I could have spent the last year building more businesses, promoting more wonderful things for the world around cryptocurrency.
Instead, I've spent all day every day dealing with lawyers.
And as much as these lawyers are trying to help me, I would rather, you know...
You know, dealing with my friends or family or business people and, you know, building actual businesses rather than dealing with lawyers every day.
Bitcoin in 2014 was between $770 and maybe close of the year close to $1,000, $950, give or take.
First of all, when do you get...
I don't even know where to start with all of this.
The indictment is relatively...
When was the indictment unsealed?
When was it unsealed?
It was unsealed the day they arrested me in Spain, which was, let's see, April of 2024.
So a decade after you've renounced your citizenship, a decade after the starting point of what they perceive to be the deemed disposition of assets or the exit tax on global net worth, what value of the Bitcoin are they choosing to assess what they claim you withheld from them?
They don't know either.
And we've literally filed Freedom of Information Act requests asking them.
We've asked them repeatedly via my lawyers.
And we even filed Freedom of Information Act requests.
How much do you think that I owe?
And they still haven't said.
And they just keep replying with delay after delay after delay.
Oh, we need more time.
We need more time.
We need more time.
You've had a decade to figure it out.
You had me arrested and disrupted an entire year of my life in Spain, and you don't even know how much you think I owe?
So it's just...
Just playing law fair and they're doing everything they can to disrupt my life.
And sadly, they've done a good job of it.
And they were furious that the Spanish authorities gave me bail and then let me be out on bail here in Spain.
They wanted to have me held in Spanish prison the entire time.
If you think it's hard being in a prison where you do speak the language, imagine how hard it is to be in a prison where you don't speak the language.
Like, it's just nuts.
And it's not like, I'm not accused of murder.
I'm not accused of robbery.
I'm not accused of, like, not filing the tax forms properly.
I'm not going to assault some old woman on the street.
I'm not a physical danger to society.
Why on earth do they think that they need to hold me in prison the entire time?
And then the US got caught lying to the Spanish court here as well.
You can see it in the court filings that are up on freerogernow.org.
Click on the motion to dismiss there.
The US government prosecutors literally got caught.
Lying to the court here in Spain trying to have me extradited to the point where there may even be criminal charges filed in Spain against the U.S. prosecutor for lying to the court here.
That's how crazy it is, and that's how wild the U.S. is trying to go after me from the Biden administration.
I'm hoping the new administration can review that and see it for what it is and bring it to an end and make America great again in the realm of truth and justice for all.
And I don't like putting the juju out in the universe, but they wanted to put you in the same Spanish prison where McAfee allegedly took his own life.
And John McAfee was a personal friend of mine.
I spent lots of time with him.
That guy was an amazing genius, national treasure to America.
And whether he died or was murdered or committed suicide, I won't comment to that at the moment, but it was in the exact same prison where the U.S. had me put.
And so the U.S. has a track record of going after some of their best and brightest entrepreneurs.
It's an absolute travesty the way John McAfee was treated.
How long did you know him for?
Years, years.
There's plenty of videos of us together on...
On YouTube, I celebrated his birthday party together with him before.
Lots of phone calls and in-person meetings with him.
He was just such a smart guy.
I hope I can be even half as sharp and active when I'm in my 70s as he was.
He was literally a national treasure, and all the bureaucrats that hounded that guy and harassed him should be absolutely ashamed of the way they treated him.
I won't ask.
Okay, maybe I'll ask later.
We'll see in terms of McAfee because I have my own theories as well as to whether or not a man of McAfee's psychological comportment would take their own life in a Spanish prison.
Okay, so the decade after you leave and you have this so-called exit tax, which is a tax on your aggregate net worth, what does the IRS or the authorities do in that decade before the indictment and before the arrest?
They had been auditing and auditing and auditing and auditing and all my tax attorneys and accountants, they told me, like, you didn't do anything.
This is fine.
And at the very end, the IRS finally went silent in regards to everything there.
And my attorney said, like, Roger.
Congratulations. I think this is the end of it.
They've finally given up and they're going to go bother somebody else because they have absolutely nothing here.
And they said probably 90% chance that's the case.
Maybe 10%, 15% chance that they'll file a secret arrest warrant for you and have you arrested somewhere in the world, which I'm always an optimist.
And I knew I hadn't done anything wrong.
I did my absolute best to comply with everything.
And so I thought, great, I can go on with my life.
And I was zipping around the world from country to country.
And sure enough, when I landed here in Spain, that's when they had me arrested.
But that's actually one of the arguments that we have against them, too.
It's something called forum shopping.
The U.S. is not allowed to do what's called forum shopping.
The U.S. knew when I was in Japan.
They knew when I was in Korea.
I was in Singapore.
I was in Dubai.
All within like, you know, a month or two of me arriving in Spain.
Why didn't they have me arrested in any of those countries?
And the reason is, is they didn't think any of those countries would be likely to extradite me.
Whereas the U.S. and Spain are such close allies, the U.S. thought they had a much better chance of having me extradited from Spain, which is why they had me arrested in Spain.
And it's why they had John McAfee arrested in Spain as well.
He was zipping around the world as well.
Why didn't they have him arrested in any of the other countries?
It's because the U.S. feels the most confident that they'll have people extradited from Spain.
I'm optimistic that the Spanish authorities will see that this is just lawfare that's being used against me, and I hope they'll see it for that and do the right thing here in Spain as well.
The similar thing happened with Pavel Durov, where they arrest him in France because our theory, Barnes and I discussed, that they wouldn't have gotten him extradited from United Arab Emirates because they would not have believed these charges were worthy of extradition.
So for the 10 years...
They're auditing you.
The corporations themselves, do they have to file audited financial statements?
I don't know.
These weren't publicly traded companies, but they're audited in the sense that you sign your tax returns under penalty of perjury.
And my tax returns each year were more than 1,000 pages long each year.
These are incredibly complicated things.
And it was just another huge burden as well.
And one of the underlying allegations in the indictment, and it's the one that people hang their hats on, is that...
You allegedly withheld information from your professionals as relates to the transfer of Bitcoin.
First of all, I mean, whether or not you want to comment on that, explain how they got your professional correspondence in the first place between accountants, between attorneys, because I don't think people fully appreciate, even if true, and I think it's attenuated whether or not you could possibly conceal anything, even if true, the fruits of the poisonous tree of seizing solicitor, client, and privileged documents.
First of all, I gave my accountants and tax attorneys, I gave them everything they needed.
Absolutely everything.
I didn't tell them what I had to eat for dinner the night before because that wasn't relevant.
But for everything relevant, I gave them absolutely everything.
They had full access to all my accounting books.
They had everything, including all the Bitcoin transactions and all of that.
Then the part that's just so crazy is the U.S., they didn't have whatever it is they wanted to charge me with.
So how did they go about trying to figure out what they can do?
They literally raided my attorney's office, right?
So they literally showed up with guns on their hips at my attorney's office and raided my attorneys and said, give us all your information you have about your communication with Roger Ver.
When you speak to your attorney in America, you're supposed to have what's called attorney-client privilege, which means whatever you tell your attorney is supposed to be between you and your attorney.
So they literally violated that every which way from Sunday in regards to my own situation.
I fought that all the way to the Supreme Court saying, hey, you're not allowed to do that.
And I knew all the information they were trying to get there, too, was all evidence that proves my innocence.
And so that's actually maybe one of the things that made them extra angry.
They spent years and years and years fighting it all the way to the Supreme Court.
Eventually, the Supreme Court decided not to rule on the issue, and we had to turn over a couple more emails to them.
They are literally emails of me saying, do everything perfectly.
I know I'm going to be audited.
It's more information proving my innocence.
So they were probably furious.
They thought that they were going to get some really juicy information they could use against me, and instead they got the exact opposite.
They got more information proving my innocence, and so they were probably upset about that as well.
Anyone who has questions about this should go and read the motion to dismiss on freerogernow.org.
The entire motion to dismiss is there, and it has all these emails.
And you can see with your own eyes Roger saying, I need everything done properly.
I know they're going to come and audit me.
I know they don't like me.
You know, cross every T dot every I. You can see it for yourself.
And right there, you can see the motion to dismiss and then the government's reply and then our reply to that as well.
And if you don't feel like reading, you know, I don't know, a couple hundred pages there, just toss all of it into ChatGTP and ask ChatGTP for its opinion.
And it literally starts saying that the government's position looks like a bunch of half-truths and misrepresentations.
And it'll literally say that my side, you know, seems much, much stronger.
So if you don't want to read it all yourself, just ask your favorite AI language.
But in order to raid your attorney's offices, they would have had to have alleged that your attorneys were conspiring in the criminality in order to breach solicitor-client privilege?
Right. That's what's also so crazy is like the only way that you're ever allowed to like have access to attorney client communications is if there's what's called a crime fraud exception.
So you have to say, oh, they were engaging in a crime together.
It's like a chicken and egg problem.
And when they finally got access to the egg of my communications with me and my attorneys, all it was was more information proving that I'm innocent.
So the whole thing is just absolutely insane and not the sort of thing that's supposed to happen in America.
And anybody that loves America and truth and justice should be absolutely appalled at the way the IRS has behaved in my own situation.
Okay, now the question I had here was, I was going to say in terms of, you know, they'll find emails that say do it properly and they'll say, well, that's a dog whistle to do it unproperly.
Like when, you know, in the indictment against Trump in Georgia, one of the allegations was literally Trump saying whatever the legal remedy is, and they still included that in the RICO conspiracy.
I am not mistaken that they absolutely, they did not go through or bypass any civil remedy entirely prior to proceeding to indictment and...
Extradition and attempt to lock you up for over a day, over a century.
The entire time for the last decade, my stance was, if I owe something, I will pay it.
You show me what I owe, I will pay it.
Like, if we did something wrong, show us, I will pay it.
That's been the stance the entire time.
And never once have they been able to show us what we've done wrong.
And never once have they said, oh, pay this money.
We think you owe us this.
Like, they have never, ever, ever, ever done that.
And that just shows that this whole thing, they're just mad about me spreading Bitcoin to the world and my political views, not about, you know, whatever, you know, tax I did or didn't pay.
Tracy, maybe you can also field this one.
They allegedly obtained evidence in violation of solicitor-client privilege, other breaking of the rules.
What did they do and what evidence did they purportedly procure as a result?
So they raided the attorney's office and they began questioning one of the junior attorneys there.
And when one of the senior attorneys came along, he realized what was happening and shut it down.
By that point, the damage was done in the sense that a lot of privileged communication had been leaked, if you will.
And so, like Roger was saying, they took this all the way to the Supreme Court.
And because the Supreme Court did not stand up for the American law at this point, we're standing on the verge of a very perilous precipice.
And that is the decimation of attorney-client privilege.
If this case goes forward, if this is allowed to stand, if Roger goes away for the rest of his life based on stolen communications...
Stolen communications that prove my innocence, by the way.
Exactly. The irony of that.
But then at that point, it means attorney-client privilege is dead.
Attorney-client privilege is dead if Roger goes away for this.
And that should terrify every American because we all should be standing firm to protect attorney-client privilege.
It's one of our sacred rights as Americans.
If we don't have that, we have nothing standing between us and lawfare.
And so what gives me hope, though, is that in the last couple years, so many Americans have woken up to lawfare and also Americans at the highest echelons, the most powerful ones, because Roger was a victim of lawfare.
He was just early.
Then there was Alex Jones.
Now there's Donald Trump and now many members of Trump's own cabinet.
And so because there have been so many more victims of lawfare now, there are finally people willing to hear and to listen and to understand Roger's story, whereas 10 years ago, it was very lonely for you.
Nobody else understood what he was going through, but now they've overplayed their hand, finally.
And we finally have an administration in place that can say, you know what?
We understand lawfare.
We've been victims of it too, and it has to stop.
And the only way we are going to move forward as a country, have a shot at national unity, is if this stops.
And it stops now.
This was under the Biden administration.
This was at the same time when they were not only violating solicitor-client privilege in all of the Trump persecutions and set aside the Alex Jones as well.
They were literally going after attorneys for the legal advice they gave to Donald Trump in a variety of contexts.
If I may ask, and I don't know if I should know this, Have they gone after any of your lawyers, your accountants, for any of the advice they gave?
Or have they sort of not flown under the radar, but have they escaped prosecution?
I don't actually know at this point, because the lawyer said to stop talking to all the other people that work for me.
So, like, some of these people were my dear, dear close friends that, you know, worked for me for, you know, more than a decade, just like, almost like family.
And so, like, it breaks my heart that I haven't been allowed to talk to them since all this started as well, because they were close, personal friends of mine as well.
And the whole thing is just really, really the opposite of how America is supposed to be.
And it's really, really frustrating and it needs to come to an end.
And hopefully this new administration can see that and help, you know, right these past wrongs.
And Tracy, in our local community, someone's asking, please explain, elaborate on why the Supreme Court didn't take the case.
Did it deny cert or did they issue any sort of substantive ruling on the issue?
They agreed to take the case and there were oral arguments in front of the Supreme Court and everything.
I think it was something like there were 12 amicus briefs, right?
Friend of the court briefs.
100% of them were in favor of my side.
So every single, and that's my lawyer, so that's unheard of for all of them to have even that high a number of amicus briefs, and then for all of them to be in favor of one side.
But ultimately, the Supreme Court decided, even though they went through all the motions and had oral arguments and written arguments and everything, they decided not to actually rule on the case, which means the lower court's ruling stood, and we turned over all the documents then at that point, which then just...
Prove my innocence again.
But it's really, you know, if you don't have attorney-client privilege, what do you even need an attorney for?
So they're just going to use them to incriminate you.
Okay, so now your status now, you get indicted.
The raids occur in America, correct?
Or were they like, I presume they were not international?
No, all the raids occurred in America.
I'm sure they would have loved to have raided me internationally if they could have.
It just shows how much safer I was being outside of the U.S. than inside of the U.S. because they really had it out for me.
They're harassing me year after year, decade after decade.
So yeah, all the raids were in the U.S. And again, they raided my office.
They raided my accountant's office.
They raided my lawyer's office.
All at the exact same time.
All with guns.
It was like a coordinated SWAT raid.
It wasn't a SWAT team, but when they timed it all to happen at the exact same time as well, it was a big, giant thing.
One was in Santa Clara, California.
Another was like about an hour drive north and then another was down in the LA area.
So it's like coordinated all across the state of California to raid all of these different offices at the same time.
This wasn't just some little, you know, small, small thing.
They really had, you know, made a big deal out of this and were really coming after me hard to do something like that.
And you were detained in Spain after the indictment?
Yeah, that's right.
I did almost a month in prison in Barcelona here.
And again, like...
It's one thing to be in a prison where you speak a language.
Imagine being in a prison where you don't even speak the language.
It's even more difficult.
Well, I mean, if I may ask, what was that like?
What are the conditions like?
I think people think of maybe European prisons as being extravagant or something.
Is it hell on earth?
I don't know.
I'm sure things could be worse, but it's certainly not where you want to be, right?
I was here in Spain for a cryptocurrency conference, and I was going back to the hotel to check out from the hotel to head back to St. Kitts.
And then somebody in the lobby wearing just normal clothes, they come up to me with a real thick Spanish accent.
They say, are you Roger Veer?
I say, yes.
Are you Roger Veer?
And they ask several times because his accent's so thick and it's hard for us to understand each other.
And once he finally realizes that I understand him asking me if I'm Roger Veer and that I'm Roger Veer, he pulls out a badge and like an Interpol arrest warrant and says, we're here to arrest you.
And the bottom falls out of my stomach and just...
Oh, what a horrible, horrible feeling.
And then all my friends who I was supposed to have dinner with that evening too, I didn't show up for dinner, didn't text them.
Like, I'm always a very on-time, punctual, responsive person.
And so they were terrified that I had been, you know, kidnapped by private criminals.
And, you know, we just heard recently the owner, I'm sorry, the founder of Ledger Wallet was kidnapped by private criminals in France just a couple weeks ago.
They literally, you know, cut off one of his fingers trying to get his cryptocurrency.
And so like, you know, there's all sorts of people and some of them are personal friends that have had themselves or their friends or loved ones kidnapped because their involvement in cryptocurrency as well.
And so my friends were terrified that that had happened to me.
Luckily, it wasn't private criminals who had kidnapped me, but it was still just an absolute disaster.
I'm cut off from everybody I know and love, don't have access to contact any of them.
And I, you know, I had two and a half years of junior high school Spanish and junior high school was a long time ago.
My Spanish is not very good.
So suddenly I'm thrust into a prison where Almost nobody speaks English.
What a tough thing to deal with.
They kept you there for a month denying bail?
What was the pretext to keeping you in locked up for a month instead of issuing some sort of bond and house arrest immediately?
It took about that long for my Spanish attorney to convince the court to grant me bail.
I'm not a Spanish citizen.
And kudos to my lawyer.
Jaime Campanier here in Spain.
If anybody needs an extradition lawyer in Spain, that guy is fantastic.
So that's my plug for that guy.
And we'll see what the final results are here.
But he really, really cares about his customers as well.
And if it wasn't Graham, I think I'd be in jail in Spain to this day.
Yeah. When did you get out of the Spanish jail?
It was like three and a half weeks after they had me arrested there.
End of May.
End of May, you've been on house arrest in wherever you're at right now, which however beautiful a destination it is, it's been transformed into a bigger prison.
It would be a lot prettier if I was allowed to leave when I wanted, I'll tell you that.
And they're trying to...
What is the status of the extradition to the U.S.?
First of all, who makes this request for extradition?
How does it work, practically speaking?
Yeah, this is my first time through all of this, but my best understanding is that the U.S. is the one asking Spain to extradite me, and then the Spanish court has to decide whether or not they will extradite me.
And there's a whole bunch of different criteria in regards to that.
And so while that's going on, every other day I have to go to the Spanish court in person and show them my ID and say, hey, I'm still here.
I didn't run away, and I'm not allowed to do basically anything other than just live life here within this little island off the coast of Spain.
Not allowed on boats, not allowed on airplanes, not allowed to...
Do much of anything other than just, you know, stay put and check in with the court every other day and while I wait for the Spanish court to decide whether or not they're going to extradite me.
And so that ruling could come down, like all arguments and everything has been submitted, that ruling, you're just waiting for the ruling to be issued?
It could literally happen today.
After we're done recording, maybe I'll go back to the place I'm renting here and maybe the police will be waiting for me and put me in jail.
I was literally expecting that to happen last week, to be honest.
And the longer it takes, the more likely it is that maybe the ruling will be in my favor.
But it very well could happen today.
It could happen tomorrow.
It could happen the day after that.
I'm expecting it any day now.
And if the ruling is to extract me to the U.S., they'll put me right back in jail here in Spain.
And then they'll wait for the U.S. Marshals to come and pick me up and then fly me back to the U.S. And for anyone who wants to understand this more, I really encourage people to go watch the documentary Bitcoin Jesus.
It's on YouTube and it's also pinned at the top of Roger's X profile.
And, you know, he hates the nickname Bitcoin Jesus, but it's the one that's stuck.
It's the one people know him by.
And so hence the name of the documentary.
But if you want to understand this story more in depth, I definitely encourage people to go watch that.
And in the meantime, it's just this daily waiting game every day.
Is this the day that That Trump decides that you can go free?
Is this the day that you spend the rest of your life in prison?
Is this your last day of freedom or the first day of the rest of your life?
And it's a horrible way to live.
Well, and I want to steal, because there's people out there, and it does blow my mind, because we have long said taxation is theft, and I made a bumper sticker that said taxation isn't theft, it's armed robbery.
And I'm coming from Canada where we pay...
Effectively more than 50% all said and done.
You have 44% income tax, 15% sales tax, mutation tax, you know, everything.
The amount of people saying, well, don't get creative with your numbers and you can avoid life in jail for allegedly unpaid taxes.
The bulk of the indictment or like the steel man of the indictment is that you allegedly concealed from your accountants transactions with Bitcoin, set aside how that can even occur if it did occur.
The underlying theory of the prosecution.
Is that you failed to disclose or concealed your net assets for the purposes of the exit tax on your net value when you left America?
Or as of the time you renounced your citizenship?
First of all, that's not true.
Second of all, the worldwide global trade volume for all the Bitcoins traded was less than $10 million.
So there's no possible way, even if I had had, you know, 5 million Bitcoins, how could you possibly say that my Bitcoins are worth more than all the Bitcoins traded in the entire world?
So the whole thing is just absolute nonsense the whole way through and through, and it's just pure lawfare.
The way that the exit tax works is that you have to do what's called a constructive hypothetical sale in one day.
So it's, what would you get for your assets if you sold all of them in a 24-hour period the day before your renunciation?
And Roger made no decisions here.
These were made by his tax attorney, his accountants, the former federal prosecutors that he hired to do this.
And what they concluded was that if they assumed that not a single other person in the world sold Bitcoin that day, and Roger was the only person in the entire world selling Bitcoin that day, the maximum that he could reasonably get for his Bitcoin would be the total of the entire global trading volume.
Seems pretty reasonable.
It seems pretty reasonable.
And again, I'll go back again.
This was not Roger making this determination.
This was the professionals he hired, and there is something called the neonatology test.
Which is for, you know, for tax cases like this.
It's a reliance on counsel defense.
And the way our system is built is that if you are relying on your counsel, the IRS can disagree with the number that they think you owe, but they cannot come after you criminally.
And so this is another protection for us that they are trying to destroy here.
If you choose competent counsel...
Give them the information and then rely in good faith on what they tell you and you make your actions based on that.
You should not be able to be charged criminally under the U.S. Supreme Court decision that is known as the neonatology test.
And so this is why they have to argue inaccurately that Roger did not give the information.
You know, to the professionals that he hired.
And again, I encourage people, go read the motion to dismiss.
It will answer all of these questions.
And it will also make it very clear to you that, again, this is lawfare.
And it's not about, this isn't some fringe cryptocurrency case.
This is a case which will destroy protections that affect all of us.
Reliance on counsel, attorney-client privilege.
And that's why we all have to care about this.
That's why I got involved, was because those two precedents they're trying to set terrified me.
Well, and also, unless I'm mistaken, at the time, let's say 2014, there was ambiguity as to how Bitcoin gains were to be taxed in the first place.
It wasn't just ambiguity.
There was literally no guidance in any way, shape, or form, not a single word of guidance from the IRS as to how to handle Bitcoin taxes.
There was no guidance.
So we did the absolute best we could with the information we had at the time.
And the SEC at that point was claiming that it was a currency, which meant it didn't fall under the exit tax at all.
Different government agencies had conflicting opinions as to what Bitcoin was at that time.
And I don't want to get too into the weeds because it's pending litigation.
What I find interesting is in the indictment, they're holding...
They're alleging things that occurred years after you renounced your citizenship to, I guess, hype up the value of whatever Bitcoin they say was transacted upon, concealed from your accountants, which I don't for the life of me understand how...
We probably shouldn't go any deeper into the case itself.
Yeah, absolutely.
The point is simply, this was lawfare, this is lawfare, and it needs to end.
It needs to end now.
I'm not even going to get into the politics of Bitcoin.
I've now since been exposed to it because I don't understand Bitcoin.
I swear I don't understand Bitcoin.
I was just trying to have a member of our locals community and cryptists explain it to me.
Still don't understand it.
But I understand that there's politics involved and there are people out there who, for whatever the reason, and maybe they think they have good reasons, don't like Roger.
And I see these in the replies.
And I'm like, don't people understand?
I'd like you to relay the message.
It doesn't matter whether or not you like the person.
It doesn't matter whether or not you think the person did something wrong to you 20 years ago.
This is something that can and will have an impact on everybody.
But to the people out there, Roger, who have personal vendettas or gripes against you for things that occurred in the Bitcoin industry over the last decade, how do you try to sway them or sensitize them to the aggregate risks of what's being done to you?
Yeah, there was a civil war within Bitcoin.
I was on the losing side of the civil war, but that has absolutely nothing to do with the tax lawfare that's being used against me.
And so even if you disagree with my Bitcoin politics, you should agree with me that it is inappropriate and illegal and immoral to use lawfare against people that have committed no crime.
And how do they do it most often?
Through nonsense tax cases.
And that's exactly what this is.
And there's the famous speech.
First, they came for one group and nobody spoke out.
And then they came for another group and nobody spoke out.
And when they finally came for me, there was nobody left to speak out.
And luckily, I have a really big platform with Bitcoin.com and coming on shows like yours.
There's a whole bunch of other people out there that are also the victims of lawfare.
We have the Ian Freemans of the world.
We have the Roman Storms of the world.
There's a whole bunch of other people that just don't have as big of voices as I do.
But when I have this put behind me and done, the lawfare ended against me, I'll be able to spend a whole bunch more time and resources and effort to help end the lawfare against these other people as well.
And so, like, whether your favorite cryptocurrency is Bitcoin or Ethereum or whatever else out there.
We should all be on the same team.
Don't be an IRS maxi here.
They're absolutely lying about me and they're lying about these other people and their war on crypto and it needs to come to an end.
Can you explain that?
I'm sorry.
Bitcoin maximalist.
I don't even know.
Is the alternative a Bitcoin minimalist?
What does Bitcoin maxi mean?
Yeah, so without going too terribly deep into Bitcoin politics, there's one sub-camp that are called Bitcoin maximalists.
They think Bitcoin is the only cryptocurrency and everything else is just a four-letter word coin that they're not a fan of, right?
And so they're entitled to that view, but don't be an IRS maximalist, right?
This is just so crazy that the IRS has gotten away with what they've gotten away with.
That's just my case, but lots and lots of other cases out there, too.
Even if you hate me because I'm not a Bitcoin maximalist, you should hate the IRS more.
There's a lot of analogies that can be drawn here between you and the Jan Sixes, where people say some of the violent ones deserve to rot in jail.
Even if you think they were violent, you still get due process, and you still get a punishment commensurate with the violation.
It is weird where people have found a rationale to say, On this case, I'm with the IRS to put a man in jail for $100.
You've got to elaborate on the charges because the tax evasion is one thing.
The mail fraud, I think, is hilarious.
And to Jigam Jigams in our locals community, the video is...
It's a 22-minute documentary.
I posted it on my YouTube and Twitter feed with your permission to post it natively because I didn't want to steal copyright, but it's a good watch and it's easy.
Explain the mail fraud, because you mail in your tax returns, and they say that's how the fraud is occurring, and that in and of itself is worth how many years of jail?
Yeah, so 90 of the years are simply for mailing my tax returns in the mail.
We sent the tax return the first time.
The IRS said they didn't get it, so we sent the exact same tax return a second time.
So there's 60 of the years, and then a couple years later, while I already knew they were auditing me, we sent in another tax return, and they're saying, oh, that one was incorrect too.
So simply for placing, and it wasn't even...
Nope. Hold on.
Your audio just cut out.
There you go.
You're back?
Well, you're back.
I think it's on the non...
I see.
I think someone tripped over a cable.
Yeah, maybe.
Can you hear me now?
It's good enough.
Okay. Anyhow, 90 of the years are something for mailing the tax returns in the mail.
Absolutely wild.
The other question, so I'm not going to get into the politics.
Can you explain to a schnook Who seems to be incapable of understanding.
Two questions.
How does Bitcoin work?
I hear a bit of an echo.
How does Bitcoin work and why does it require so much energy?
And what is the intrinsic value of Bitcoin, which is digits on a ledger from what I understand?
So I'll answer the last question first.
What is the intrinsic value of Bitcoin?
There is no intrinsic value of Bitcoin.
There's no intrinsic value of gold.
There's no intrinsic value of anything.
So one of the main tenets of the Austrian School of Economics is that the value is in the mind of the beholder.
And so imagine if there's a whole bunch of gold coins on Earth, but there are no humans on Earth.
The gold coins have no value.
So the value is in the mind of the person looking at the Bitcoin or the object or the gold or whatever it is.
And so why does it require so much electricity?
It's based on this thing called proof of work.
And so all the Bitcoin miners are out there doing it.
There's a fantastic video called...
What is Bitcoin?
I think it came out in 2011.
And it's actually still a really great description as to what Bitcoin is.
And I think it has tens of millions of views at this point.
But go and look for this 2011 YouTube video called What is Bitcoin?
And that'll do a fantastic job describing it.
All right.
And if you can explain the difference to a Schnuck of the difference between a Bitcoin and a meme coin, Dogecoin, for example.
Neither have any intrinsic value, but I would say a meme coin has even less intrinsic value.
A meme coin is just something where they're very open about it.
It's just a funny dog picture or cat picture or whatever it is.
I think I'm not the right age demographic to comment too directly on meme coins.
I only have one that someone gave me for free.
You know, meme coins are definitely not my thing.
I'm all about peer-to-peer electronic cash, whichever cryptocurrencies work the best for people to use in commerce.
And that's what attracted me to Bitcoin so much early on is I was involved in e-commerce and every single day we had people with stolen credit cards trying to spend, you know, use their stolen credit cards at my web store.
And so it became really difficult knowing which orders were real and which ones were fake.
And when Bitcoin came along, suddenly now here's a method where I could accept a payment from anyone anywhere on the planet with no risk of payment fraud.
And that was a really, really big deal.
So I knew people were going to start using it as peer-to-peer cash for the world.
And that's why I started investing in Bitcoin and Bitcoin businesses.
Okay, excellent.
And Susie C in our local community says thank you.
Roger, I guess the question is also, hypothetically, the saga ends tomorrow.
What do you want to do?
What's the first thing you dip your toe back into in the business world?
For a moment, I thought you meant the saga ends tomorrow and I'm in jail tomorrow.
No, no, no.
The other direction there, too.
No, there you have appeals and you'll have some public outcry.
The amazing thing is to envision you being extradited back to America and it's going to be Trump's administration carrying on these charges of the Biden administration.
I don't see how that works.
You know, I do see for all of the pardons that Trump was issuing on day one to make political statements and to undo the criminality of the Biden regime.
In my prediction, this one fits right along with it.
The Eric Adams also, just because there's a little bit of lawfare arguably against Eric Adams for having gone anti-migrant.
But no, you get your freedom back tomorrow.
What do you do?
Yeah, I think, of course, I'll see my friends and family again, finally.
But in terms of work and the stuff that most people are probably interested in, I'm really interested in seeing cryptocurrencies be usable as cash for the world.
And so I'll probably get a bit more involved in something called Confidential Layer and Zeno, which basically allows...
The Bitcoins and Bitcoin Cash and Ethereum and other EVM chains to have, you know, super fast, cheap private transactions, which they don't have now.
There's no privacy on Bitcoin or Ethereum or these sorts of things.
And so Confidential Air bridging wrapped Bitcoins with no custodian over onto Zeno will really make Bitcoin, you know, it'll be a scaling and a privacy solution for Bitcoin.
And that's about to go live in the Bitcoin.com wallet here as well.
So I'm pretty excited about that.
All the stuff happening in the world of AI, what an exciting time to be alive.
If anybody hasn't read any of Ray Kurzweil's books, I really recommend picking them up.
The world is about to change in a really, really big way.
And as human beings, very, very shortly here, we're not going to be the smartest things on the planet anymore.
And I just want to do the best I can to keep up with all the stuff that's happening.
I'm going to have to go back and listen to what you just said, because I don't think I understand a word of it.
I'm joking.
I'm not joking.
I have a mental block when it comes to trying to conceptualize everything that you just said there.
I'll give you another little example of just how big a deal it is.
Maybe on the planet right now, in humans, you have an IQ range of maybe from 50 to 150 is about the range there.
Soon we're going to have things with an IQ of 5,000.
It's just not even in the same universe.
An example, you take your average human and you give them enough time.
Most of them, or at least some of them, can understand calculus.
But if you take a dog brain and you give the dog brain 1,000 years, the dog is never going to be able to understand calculus.
There are problems in the universe that even if us mere humans have a million years to think about the problem, we're still not going to be able to even understand the problem, let alone solve it.
Yet these superhuman intelligences that are about to come into existence are going to be able to not only understand what the problem is, but then find solutions to those problems that us mere humans, we can't even understand what the problem is, just like a dog brain can't understand a calculus problem.
And so how is that going to change the world?
I don't know.
I'm too dumb to figure it out, but I'm going to do my best to try and watch with some excitement from the sideline here, I suppose.
And let me ask you a question.
I don't know if you've ever answered it before.
I think you might have.
Hypothetically, charges either pardon dropped, dismissed, whatever.
Do you anticipate or would you contemplate coming back to a Trump America as opposed to the America that you were forced out of?
Yeah, I'm very open to that.
My biggest fear would be who's going to win the next election in four years from now.
But I think one of the first stops I'll make is to go back to the U.S. and visit my parents.
I haven't seen them for quite a while because of this.
And they're too old to travel themselves at the moment.
And this is one of the great tragedies, David, is that we have been keeping good people out of our country.
We've been keeping many of our top entrepreneurs out of the country.
Roger's not the only one who's left by any means.
And we all know people who, you know, before this November, other patriots who were saying, you know what, if Kamala Harris wins, we're out.
We don't feel safe staying here anymore.
So anyone who's questioning why Roger left needs to think back to how they felt at the end of October of this year.
I bet you you knew people who were planning to leave too.
I know I did.
I'm guessing you did too, Viva.
We're considering whether it was safe to stay here.
No, well, I'm here as a Canadian.
When I decided to leave Canada...
You understand more than anyone does.
Where the hell am I?
Where is left to go?
When I was covering the trucker protests and I was talking to people who fled communist countries, and I said, are you going to go back if it falls here in Canada?
Where am I going to go back to?
They're not running back to Venezuela.
They're not running back to...
Eastern European countries.
Actually, maybe some of the countries now are more alluring than others.
If it falls in the States, good luck.
You're going to end up living in certain countries just as a matter of necessity.
One more question.
Someone in the chat, locals, asked the difference between Ethereum and Bitcoin, if there is any material difference.
Quite a big difference and probably a little bit too much to get into, but head on over to Bitcoin.com.
We explain it all there, but be prepared to spend all day.
There's a lot going on in both chains there.
All right.
Amazing. And I don't think I forgot anything.
Let me just see.
I'm going to briefly peruse the chat and see if I've forgotten anything.
The state of the proceedings now, you're waiting on the Spanish courts to decide on extradition.
It can be yay or nay.
You're waiting on potential...
No, I won't even ask that, but you've obviously been running a pretty obvious campaign to try to get Trump's attention.
By the way, Viva, it's been entirely organic.
That's the most amazing thing.
We have so many people who...
Roger has been kind to in the past.
Roger's a really good person, and he's been kind to many people.
And to now see those people coming forward and standing up for him has been beautiful to watch.
You know, you can argue whether karma is a law of the universe, but many people are stepping up to make karma real.
And so it's been beautiful seeing Roger's kindness and generosity in the past come back as so many people who none of us would know their names are now standing up and saying, you know what, this has got to end.
This is a man who was good to me.
I can vouch for his character.
And it's time for him to come home.
My underlying point is, even if you don't...
Roger, you seem like a very decent guy.
It's not like some of the Jan Sixers who...
The one example they use, the guy Huddle who had a criminal record and then got shot by a police officer.
Some of them might not be savory characters.
It doesn't mean you tolerate constitutional violations of all due process.
You happen to seem like a decent guy.
Set aside the politics of Bitcoin, which I'm not getting into.
I'm not going to ask if you've spoken directly to Trump, but the message...
If you had one that you would send to the administration, I mean, I don't know who wants to say it.
Roger, I guess you might be best to say it, but what is the message to the admin?
Yeah, I'll gladly say it.
The message is thank you for starting to make America great again.
But one of the steps to making America great again is ending the lawfare against people that haven't committed any real crime.
And I'm just one of many.
So thank you for freeing all the J6ers.
Thank you for freeing the other people that deserved it.
But there's a whole lot more to go.
And so I hope you can have the entire Justice Department review all these different lawfare cases and bring it into them.
So thank you for the next steps, but I'm looking forward to the next steps.
I'll bring this up as well.
Ross is a great guy.
He donated to the Free Ross.
They're talking about Ross Ulbricht, who was another victim.
And then people with Ross say, well, he was selling drugs on the website.
Not understanding the degree to which they've been brainwashed by what they've been told in the media, but operating a website whereon people were doing illegal things, and then he goes to jail for the rest of his life, but for a pardon from Trump, he would rot away for the rest of his life.
So he's been gifted a new life.
Many people have from Trump pardons back in...
End of 2020 and many more as a result of the pardons now.
So I can't think of a better place to end it.
Roger or Tracy, we'll say our proper goodbyes right now.
I'm going to end the stream, but I'm going to put up all the links.
So FreeRoger, let me see here, it's FreeRogerJones.org.
And there you can find the indictment, or you can find all of the pleadings.
And you can find the documentary as well.
Yeah, I say you might want to use some sort of chat GPT.
Use Encryptus's AI in Locals to summarize the documents because it's, by design, it gets too voluminous for people to actually be able to keep up with.
But you understand the broad brushstrokes now.
I think everybody does a lot better.
What can people do if they want to help?
I mean, what can people do?
Text? Just keep up the social media pressure.
Yeah, keep spreading the word.
And again, it's not just me.
Go and look at the Roman Storm case, right?
This guy literally was just writing software code to give people using Ethereum more privacy.
He wrote software code.
He wasn't running a business.
He wasn't running the service.
He literally just wrote software code.
They're wanting to toss that guy in jail for decades and decades as well.
He was involved with a project called Tornado Cash.
Just really, really shocking the way the Biden administration did everything they could to wage a war on crypto and drive some of the best and the brightest crypto entrepreneurs out of the country.
It's just really, really a shame.
So I guess what can they do?
Keep spreading the word that the lawfare needs to come to an end.
If we want to make America great again, the lawfare has to come to an end right now.
And keep calling on Trump to end Biden's war on crypto.
The Biden administration had a war on crypto.
Trump is friendly to crypto.
That's a beautiful thing.
The best way to show that and to bring all these entrepreneurs home who have fled the country is to just end and dismiss the entire Biden war on crypto.
Barnes always says it.
He says, what better political move can you do other than pardon Bitcoin, Jesus?
But I know, Roger, you don't like the name.
And Encryptus over in our Locos community says, Ethereum versus Bitcoin is like saying, what's the difference between paying cash with a credit card in US dollars?
Being paid with a credit card in US dollars versus paying cash in Euro.
And I can appreciate the analogy.
I'm going to put up all the links in the pinned comment.
Roger, Tracy, thank you for coming on.
This has answered a lot of my questions and reassured me of some of my beliefs, although I'm skeptical of the IRS as a rule, not as the exception.
Everyone, stay tuned.
I'll be live with Enrique Tarrio tomorrow at 12.30.
Roger, Tracy, stick around.
We're going to say our proper goodbyes to everyone else out there.
Did I miss anything?
Here, let's see.
We got a super chat.
Roger punched over his weight, working class, class hard forking Bitcoin.
While I currently refer to it as Bitcoin, I do believe the pardon is justified.
I'd like to comment on that, too.
Actually, that's one of the smears they've been using against me, is that I hard forked Bitcoin.
If you head on over to rogerverefacts.com, you can see all the facts there.
I had absolutely nothing to do with the creation of Bitcoin.
I had absolutely nothing to do with the creation of Bitcoin Cash.
I was just a good promoter of both.
What the hell does hard fork mean?
I don't like reading tip questions that I don't understand the question, but what does hard fork mean?
So there used to just be one single version of Bitcoin and that one single version of Bitcoin then split into two versions.
And one version is still called Bitcoin.
The other version is called Bitcoin Cash today.
But there was a huge civil war as to which version would get to keep the name Bitcoin.
And I wound up being on the losing side of that, thinking that the one that's called Bitcoin Cash today should have been called Bitcoin, and the one that's called Bitcoin today should have been called something else.
And there's still a lot of people that either were around at that time or have been brainwashed since that are real upset about that.
But that's not what my case is about, and that's not what I want to focus on.
I want to focus on the unjustness of the lawfare that's being used against crypto entrepreneurs of any chain.
Well, as they say, the history is written by the victors.
And if you lost the war, Roger, you're not right.
You don't get the right...
That is to say, you couldn't understand how the history is written out to...
But like I say, I don't care about the politics.
This is quite the politics of Bitcoin.
This is about the politics of lawfare.
So, all right, you're going to hear a dog starting to whine now.
Roger, Tracy, stick around.
We're going to say our proper advice.
Everyone in the chat, I will see you all no later than tomorrow.
Thank you all for being here.
Snip, clip, and share away.
And we'll see where this goes.
Fingers crossed.
▲
Export Selection