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When popular bitcoin influencer Roger Ver, known by his 700,000 X followers as “Bitcoin Jesus,” was arrested in February while attending a cryptocurrency conference in Barcelona, the $3 trillion digital asset industry erupted with social media posts and commentary from leading industry voices condemning the act as yet another example of the Biden administration’s “war on crypto.”
Ver’s arrest came after the U.S. Attorney for the Central District of California unsealed an eight-count criminal indictment accusing him of allegedly failing to pay nearly $50 million in taxes on the sale of some $240 million worth of bitcoin in 2017 and under-representing the value of his bitcoin holdings in 2014 when he renounced his citizenship and left the U.S. for the Caribbean nation of Saint Kitts and Nevis.
Lawyers for Ver, 45, an early adopter and promoter of bitcoin who has publicly criticized the U.S. government’s approach to crypto regulation, say the Justice Department’s indictment is purely political and another example of Biden-era officials using enforcement to regulate a space without providing clear rules of the road.
Roger Ver poses for a photograph at the Shape the Future: Blockchain Global Summit in Hong Kong, China, on Sept. 20, 2017. (Anthony Kwan/Bloomberg via Getty Images / Getty Images)
Now Ver and his lawyers are fighting back. His legal team is made up of attorneys from white-shoe law firms Steptoe LLP and Kimura London & White, who on Tuesday filed a motion to dismiss the indictment, citing unconstitutional government overreach and misleading evidence. People on his legal team are hoping that a crypto-friendly Trump administration will drop the case as part of the president-elect’s promise to end the regulatory assault on the industry.
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People on Ver’s legal team are hoping that a crypto-friendly Trump administration will drop the case as part of the president-elect’s promise to end the regulatory assault on the industry. (James Devaney/GC Images | istock)
“I always knew I’d be a political target for the IRS and law enforcement after I expatriated,” Ver said in an exclusive statement to FOX Business. “That’s why I made sure to hire the most reputable attorneys and accountants and gave them clear instructions to file everything perfectly — so there’d be no issues when the inevitable audit came. But of course, the IRS still found a way to make it a problem anyhow.”
Ver is an American entrepreneur who briefly ran for California State Assembly in 2000 as a libertarian. His nickname “Bitcoin Jesus” is the result of his early investment in and promotion of the world’s largest digital asset dating back to 2011 when he used to give away free bitcoin when the asset, which now trades at nearly $100,000 per token, traded anywhere from $0.31 to $31 per coin.
He was also an early investor in several crypto startups, including Ripple Labs, Blockchain.com, Bitcoin.com (which he founded and served as CEO), and provided the seed money to start BitPay and Kraken. He relocated to Japan in 2006 and eventually became a citizen of Saint Kitts and Nevis when he renounced his U.S. citizenship later in 2014. He was arrested by Spanish police at the behest of U.S. authorities while on a trip to Barcelona earlier this year to attend a crypto conference focused on privacy blockchains, specialized blockchain networks designed to enhance user privacy. Around that time, he was also touting the launch of his new book “Hijacking Bitcoin: The Hidden History of BTC,” which argues how governmental control and regulations have tarnished the cryptocurrency landscape. He’s now out on bail in Spain awaiting possible extradition to the U.S. for a trial date of Feb. 3, 2025.
Roger Ver holds his passport as he poses for a photograph in the Shibuya district of Tokyo, Japan, on June 4, 2014. (Tomohiro Ohsumi/Bloomberg via Getty Images / Getty Images)
Ver’s lawyers, and many in the wider crypto industry, say his public criticism of the U.S. government may have been part of the reason for his indictment. Ver told FOX Business that his release of his correspondence with his attorney and the rationale for actions involving taxes in the filing is designed to show the public — and the Trump administration — he was not trying to flout the law in hopes of an eventual pardon from the crypto-friendly president-elect when he takes office in January.
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“I want to make sure that my exit tax payments are as clean as possible, with no room to have trouble from the IRS in the future,” Ver said to his lawyer in an email correspondence included in the filing dated April 2013.
The International Revenue Service headquarters building on Jan. 3, 2024, in Washington, D.C. (J. David Ake/Getty Images / Getty Images)
In its suit, the government alleges that in 2014, Ver purposely “underreported the fair market values” of the two businesses he owned — tech firms MemoryDealers US and Agilestar, which were among the first companies to accept bitcoin as a payment method — to avoid paying a higher so-called “exit tax.” Such a tax demands individuals pay a levy on any unrealized capital gains or income made while still a citizen. The indictment also alleges that Ver intentionally failed to report capital gains he accrued when he closed those businesses in 2017 and sold his bitcoin.
Ver’s current legal team claims in the motion to dismiss that the government violated Ver’s fundamental right to fairness and due process because officials from the Department of Justice may have improperly obtained attorney-client-privileged communications that led to his arrest while selectively withholding key information from a grand jury that, if given in full context, may have exonerated him. Additionally, they claim that the obligation of the Exit Tax ignores core constitutional protections for American citizens looking to expatriate. These claims, paired with the argument that despite Ver’s attempts to comply, tax laws surrounding digital assets were (and remain) opaque, warrants a dismissal of the indictment.
A representative for the U.S. attorney’s office in central California had no immediate comment.
Ver maintains that he relied on the professional advice of the law firm he retained (referred to as Law Firm 1 in the filing), which was operating in the confines of the limited and opaque guidance available for the nascent digital asset industry at the time. Indeed, the IRS did not issue updated guidance on taxing virtual assets suggesting that they should be treated as property, not currency and therefore subject to capital gains tax, until after Ver left the U.S. in 2014.
Ver’s lawyers argue in their motion to dismiss that his hiring of counsel would help prove he attempted in good faith to comply with the law.
Communications provided in the new motion show that due to the very small market at the time (bitcoin was trading between $450-$600 a coin), Ver’s lawyers believed selling a large quantity of the asset at one time could have caused the price of bitcoin to crash, making it difficult to determine a realistic value, according to emails between Ver and his lawyers included in the new filing. To handle this, Ver’s advisors suggested getting a third-party appraisal of his holdings that would take into account the low trading volume and establish a more reasonable valuation than the daily price of bitcoin at the time.
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Ver says his lawyers also advised him that he would not owe capital gains taxes upon the sale of his bitcoin assets in 2017 because his U.S. tax obligations on pre-expatriation assets had concluded when he left the country and paid his exit tax in 2014.
The request for dismissal is being filed in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California against the backdrop of an incoming administration that has signaled it will be much more friendly toward crypto than the outgoing one, has lawyers much more optimistic that Ver’s case may qualify for dismissal.
“The Trump Administration will inherit the severe economic, political and regulatory toll of the Biden Administration’s war on crypto. It will implement a range of rollbacks, pardons, and dismissals necessary to stop the lawfare and selective harassment of defendants for political reasons,” said civil rights attorney Robert Barnes, who has represented the likes of Wesley Snipes, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Ralph Nader, and is now an advocate for Ver. “Few actions could send a stronger message in this regard than pardoning Bitcoin Jesus.”
A prosecutor for the country’s top criminal court, the Southern District of New York, said last month he believes fewer cryptocurrency cases, outside of fraud and manipulation, will be brought under the new administration, which, he says, will focus more on other priorities such as enforcing immigration laws. Trump has nominated former Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Jay Clayton, who oversaw more than 50 enforcement actions against the crypto industry during his tenure but has since become an adviser to various crypto outfits, including custody platform Fireblocks and investment firm One River.
