Hero of the Week,
Roger Ver & Steve Patterson
In a fruitful partnership, co-authors Roger Ver and Steve Patterson published their excellent and revelatory book, Hijacking Bitcoin, in early 2024. Shortly thereafter, with timing that appears suspicious to many, the U.S. Department of Justice caused Ver to be arrested in Spain, alleging tax evasion a decade earlier.
As an entrepreneur, Ver’s social media profile calls attention to his long-standing interest in voluntaryism and his status as the “world’s first investor in Bitcoin startups” beginning in 2011. Perhaps because of the independent attitude reflected in statements like “The government wants you to be afraid of anyone who isn’t afraid” or his frank recognition that “A ‘store of value’ without utility is just a Ponzi [scheme],” Ver ran afoul of U.S. authorities even pre-Bitcoin. In 2001, he was prosecuted and then jailed for selling fireworks on eBay “without a license.” The steady harassment prompted him to leave the U.S. in 2006 and to renounce his citizenship in 2014 after obtaining St. Kitts citizenship.
Patterson, too, is independent-minded. As a philosopher, author, and host of the Patterson in Pursuit podcast, he describes being “obsessed” with learning, logic, and big ideas. His work has led him to conclude that “orthodox opinions are almost always wrong.”
In writing Hijacking Bitcoin, Ver and Patterson have done the world a great service, helping both Bitcoin enthusiasts and Bitcoin agnostics grapple with the co-opting of BTC for nefarious financial and governance shenanigans.
