Transcript of Why the Intel Agencies Want to Track Your Every Transaction and Throw Roger Ver in Jail for Life

Roger, thanks a lot for joining us. So here's how I understood your story. This is what I read. You are being extradited from Spain, an ally in Western Europe, a NATO country, to the United States by the US Justice Department to face life in prison, a 109 years, for tax evasion. You're not a US citizen.

The period that you're being charged with evading American taxes, you are not a US citizen. And so whenever I see a story that says the US government is extraditing somebody for tax evasion to put him in prison for a 109 years, my first thought is maybe it's not really about the taxes. Maybe there's something more to this story. Could there be another reason the US government is angry at you and wants to put you in prison for the rest of your life?

Yeah. To be honest, I think they're not really angry about taxes at all. I think they're just angry about my lack of obedience and and lack of, you know, kissing that ring. I was the 1st person in the entire world to start investing in the Bitcoin ecosystem and investing in businesses that made it easy for people to use Bitcoin as money and as cash for people all over the world, and I was promoting it since 2011 as, hey, stop using the US dollar, stop using euros, stop using yen, start using Bitcoin. We have an alternative in which each individual anywhere on the planet can be in charge of their own money completely without needing permission from any politician or any government anywhere in the world.

And when you're a government that loves controlling people through the control of the money supply, that's very, very threatening to their control of the world. So of course, they didn't like that at all. And, I knew that this sort of thing was dangerous, and I thought the safest path for me would be to not be a US citizen. So in 2014, I renounced my US citizenship and, became a, you know, a citizen of the world effectively, but my new nationality is Saint Kitts, which is a wonderful little island in the Caribbean, and I thought that that would be safe, for me, and I could promote Bitcoin from there and obey. Even though I may disagree with plenty of laws, I do my best to obey them because I know when you're advocating for things that change the world, governments don't like that, and they can come after you.

So I told all my tax attorneys and everybody else, we have to do everything perfect so that there's no room for the US government to give me a hard time about any of this. And more than a decade after I had already renounced my US citizenship, and just a couple of weeks after I published a book on the hijacking of Bitcoin, how it no longer works as peer to peer cash for the world, and it's been morphed into to something that is just a digital asset that people are speculating on the price on rather than something that can compete with the US dollar and the euro and the yen for use as currency around the world. Suddenly, right after my book gets published that exposes how people claiming to work for intelligence agencies to hijack Bitcoin to do that, suddenly I get arrested and tossed in jail, in Spain and trying to be extradited to face more than a 100 years in prison. I'm 45 today. I I think my odds of, being alive with conventional technology in a 109 years from now aren't aren't looking too good.

So effectively, to die in prison is what they want because they're so upset about the things I've been saying and the way I've been promoting cryptocurrency around the world. As as the founder of bitcoin.com, cofounder of, XRP and blockchain.com and a bunch of other companies, I literally seeded the entire first generation of cryptocurrency companies. And so they're furious at me for trying to to have something they can compete with the US dollar as the world's, medium of exchange and and currency.

Now I I should just add an editorial comment. I mean, I you know, as an I am an American citizen and will remain 1, I hope. So I'm I'm not against the US dollar in principle. It's that the mismanagement of the US dollar, I think, by the people in charge of it, the US government, the Federal Reserve, has made it kind of a a sketchy proposition long term. It's like their mismanagement has forced people to think about alternatives.

And 1 of the the most promising alternatives was Bitcoin. And it was I remember very well since I'm 55. When it first appeared, the idea was this is a way for people to conduct business, to buy goods and services without being controlled. To have, as you said, control over their money, autonomy. And it has become instead this asset class.

And I'm very interested in how exactly that happened. And so if you wouldn't mind explaining the thesis of your book, what you saw, how that happened. You say subterfuge by the intel agencies played a role. I'll stop talking and let you explain what you saw.

Yeah. I think to get started on that, we'll have to back up more than 25 years ago. So when I was a very young man, I ran for political office as a libertarian in California and, called for, you know, lower taxes, less government in in every area and everywhere. And this was, in the year 2000. And, for those of us that are old enough to remember, in the late 19 nineties, there was an incident in Waco, Texas, where there's a a religious group there with, you know, a bunch of adults, but a bunch of kids, some of them, you know, 3, 4, 5 years old, like little kids.

And, even if the parents were religious nuts, the ATF and FBI literally burnt to death everybody in their their home there, and then posed for photos on top of the the corpses of of little kids. And that sort of thing is not okay, and the FBI and ATF are a bunch of murderers for murdering kids. And even if the parents are, you know, doing something illegal, you don't murder the kids over that, and that's exactly what they did. And so in the debate with the Republican and the Democratic candidates, I called the ATF a bunch of murderers that they are for having done that, and boy, did they not like that. I was a 20, 21 year old kid that had 7 or 8 employees.

My business was starting to take off, and I wound up being the only person in the entire world to be prosecuted for selling the firecracker on eBay, even though tons of other resellers were selling it. Cabela's Sporting Goods catalog was selling it. These were being sold all over the place. I was literally the only person in the entire history of the world to be prosecuted for selling those without a permit. And, it wasn't about the fact that I had sold them without a permit.

It was they were mad about the things that I had said, and they even said as much in 1 of the the discussions with, my attorneys and the prosecutors and the ATF agents. The ATF agent literally, well, when he pounded his hand on the table, said, you didn't hear the things that he said, referring to me calling them murderers for literal I mean, if if you burn to death a bunch of kids, you're a murderer, and that's exactly what they did. And so I I wound up, actually signing a plea deal, to do 10 months in federal prison. If I had taken it to trial and lost, which I would have because I was guilty of the laws written, I I sold firecrackers without a license, I would have done 7 or 8 years in prison. And so at that point, I I no longer felt safe in the US.

I had been, you know, politically persecuted already, and so literally the day I was allowed to leave the US, I left. But the way I became a libertarian, I I wasn't born a libertarian. I started somehow I found a a book by Ludwig von Mises, and then, you know, found some, Milton Friedman, and then later David Friedman, and then Murray Rothbard is the author that really changed my life and was just music to my ears recently hearing, Millet down in Argentina talking about how Murray Rothbard was also 1 of the economists that influenced his life, the most. And I wanna urge anybody, pick up anything by Murray Rothbard. It'll change your entire view of the world.

But in these books on economics, I learned about the origin of money and how something comes to be used as money, and it has to be durable, easily divisible, it has to be, portable, has to be easily recognizable, has to be difficult to counterfeit, has to have these certain characteristics that make it usable as money. And so I read these economics books, I thought, okay, that makes sense, that sounds plausible. But then when I went to federal prison, inside prison, everybody's using things as money. Everybody's buying and selling things with each other, and the things they're using are tobacco, postage stamps, and top ramen soups. And if you think about it, all those things have those characteristics.

They're easily transportable. They're durable. They're easily recognizable. They all have some additional use case. Right?

You can mail a letter. You can eat the soup. You can smoke the tobacco. And all those things just naturally without any order from a guard or any inmate or anybody, they just naturally come to be used as money. And so then we fast forward more than a decade later there, Bitcoin came along.

And I had the the theoretical knowledge from from the books that I had read, and I had the practical experience from my time in prison. There was no doubt in my mind whatsoever that people were going to start using Bitcoin as money. And so I thought, oh, this is every libertarian's dream come true. Suddenly now we're gonna have a choice. And I'm not against the US dollar or the yen or the euro.

I'm pro choice. I think people should be able to choose what form of money they want to use. And whether it's the dollar, the euro, or the yen, or Bitcoin, or some other cryptocurrency out there, I think people deserve the the right to have that choice, and, and I want to see that enabled. And so when Bitcoin came along, the first step was for me to buy a bunch of Bitcoin. I I bought my first Bitcoin when they were less than a dollar each, and then my business, memorydealers.com, became the 1st established business in the entire world to start accepting Bitcoin for payments, and we started advertising, we accept Bitcoin.

Not a single customer paid us initially in Bitcoin, but it got worldwide media attention for the first time. And I remember it was in June of 2011, and in the course of 2, maybe 3 weeks, the price of Bitcoin went from around $3 a Bitcoin to $30 a Bitcoin, and that was the first time, in the history of Bitcoin up to that point in which it started to get some worldwide media attention. And what an interesting thing happened. So the main discussion forum where everybody up to that point was talking about Bitcoin was a website called bitcointalk.org. And suddenly when it was getting some media attention around the world and international newspapers, this forum that had worked wonderfully up to that point where people could discuss things became flooded with bots, just posting comments that were just, you know, fluff and made literally, they they DDoSed the forum to the point that it was unusable, and anybody that came there because they heard about Bitcoin in the media that week, they they weren't able to learn about it because there's just so many posts saying, you know, buy, sell, oh, no, and just just saying nothing of any substance whatsoever.

So somebody out there literally made the forum unusable as early as 2011. And around that same time, we already know that the CIA was interested in Bitcoin because they're asking different Bitcoin developers to, hey. Can you explain Bitcoin to us? So way back when the vast majority of the world hadn't even heard of Bitcoin yet, the CIA was looking into it, and somebody was actively preventing it from spreading as quickly as it otherwise could have by by shutting down the form effectively when so many new people were coming to Bitcoin to learn about it for the first time. And in the early days, everybody knew though Bitcoin was supposed to be money for the world.

Bitcoin was supposed to be used for payments as peer to peer cash for the world, and that's how people were using it. And, you know, I was doing payroll on it, and I was paying my suppliers overseas. I hosted the 1st Bitcoin meetup ever in China about it. Like, I was really doing my best to spread this all over the world, including, you know, paying for national radio ads, for it. Like, it was really, really spreading.

But then later, in, I believe, 2012, a person using the name John Dillon, who claimed to work for, intelligence, spent more than $10,000, I I I forget the exact amount, but a significant sum of money to start producing propaganda to trick people into thinking that by keeping the blocks on Bitcoin small, it would become make it more decentralized, And literally, the exact opposite of the truth, the exact opposite of the way Satoshi Nakamoto, the creator of Bitcoin, designed it and promoted it, and the exact opposite of the way that people were using it. And nobody believed the propaganda initially. But then later, this giant wave of censorship took place. Anonymous people that nobody knows their real names managed to get control of all the main discussion platforms for Bitcoin. And then suddenly, 1 day overnight, nobody was even allowed to advocate for Bitcoin being used as money, and they they censored anybody that tried to do that.

And initially, everybody saw through it, but then everybody that came to Bitcoin after the censorship began, they just started believing it. And and today, the main people that are out there promoting Bitcoin, they literally say, oh, Bitcoin shouldn't compete with the US dollar. Bitcoin, you shouldn't use it as money. You shouldn't use it to pay for things. Like, Bitcoin is just a digital asset.

You should just hold it. And it's the exact opposite. They've they've through the censorship and the propaganda, they've literally hijacked Bitcoin, and I literally wrote an entire book about it. You can find more at hijackingbitcoin.com. It's available on Amazon and everywhere else.

And lo and behold, just a couple of weeks after the the the book is published, I get arrested, and now I'm facing a 109 years in in federal prison for having exposed the way in which Bitcoin was hijacked. And you can think all day long that the new version of Bitcoin that people are promoting is better. Okay. But you can't admit that it wasn't hijacked. And luckily now we have thousands of different cryptocurrencies, and I support competition.

Right? I'm not I was never a Bitcoin maximalist or any other cryptocurrency maximalist. I'm a utilitarian freedom maximalist. Whatever gives the most utility and is the most useful for the most people around the world to improve their lives and create more economic freedom that leads to more economic growth, that's what I wanna be out there and promote to the world.

So a bunch of questions, but let's just begin with the core promise of Bitcoin, as we both remember vividly, was that I would be able to conduct transactions by goods and services privately without federal control. That there was a there was anonymity because it was digital, and I could sort of have freedom, in the things that I bought. How exactly did they control conversation about that? You say that they censored the the discussion boards. Can you explain exactly how that works?

So there there were 2 main discussion platforms where everybody was talking about Bitcoin, and that 1 was called bitcointalk.org, and then another was rBitcoin on Reddit. And everybody was busy talking about Bitcoin in those places, and the same anonymous individual managed to get moderatorship position or ownership of both of those forums. And 1 day he decided to turn on the censorship, and they would ban anybody that would state anything that wasn't in line with the small block propaganda about Bitcoin. And when the censorship first began, people started a thread on Reddit complaining about the censorship. At that point, it was the most upvoted thread ever in the entire history of that Bitcoin Subreddit.

And what did they do? They then deleted that post as well and banned the people that were participating in that post, and the censorship still goes on to this very day. If you go on our Bitcoin or bitcoin.org and post anything in favor of Bitcoin being able to scale to be money for the world, they will ban your account, and, it's really, really a shame. So the average person that's involved in Bitcoin today, they just see, oh, the price is about $100,000 each, and and Michael Saylor's talking about, you know, pay your taxes, and don't don't be inflammatory. Don't compete with the US dollar.

That's gonna make Visa and Mastercard and the the government angry. Don't do any of that. He's saying literally the exact opposite of what everybody was saying in the beginning of Bitcoin, which is like this finally gives people a choice as to what form of money they were to use. And so imagine if everybody was using Bitcoin as money in commerce to, you know, do their payroll and and buy things online and pay for everything, how would the US government be able to give 1,000,000,000 and 1,000,000,000 of dollars to Ukraine when most people don't want that to happen? How would they be able to spend 1,000,000,000 and 1,000,000,000 of dollars on all these foreign wars that most people don't want to be able to have happen?

They wouldn't be able to just inflate it out of thin air. Suddenly, government would be much, much more accountable to the people, and, you know, they teach everybody in school, oh, government, you know, government works for the people. Well, if people were using a hard asset cryptocurrency as money in everyday life, government really would have to be much more accountable to the people than they are today, and that's why government doesn't want that. So that's why they've been doing everything they can to subvert Bitcoin and prevent people from being able to use cryptocurrencies as money in daily life, whether it's from tax policy or tax reporting or or exit taxes or anything else. They're making it as difficult as possible.

In fact, even even the people that are in the studio here that we're recording this with, I offered to pay them in cryptocurrency. The reason they didn't want it is because they're scared of the tax ramifications around it, because government's going to lose control of the money supply, and if they lose control of the money supply, they lose control of most of their control of society. But if you believe in individual rights and individual freedom and people being in charge of their own destiny, it's a wonderful thing when government loses the ability to control people's lives, and that's why I'm so excited about Bitcoin. And I've been involved almost, you know, 15 years, and I've been promoting cryptocurrencies as currency for people worldwide, whether you're, you know, stuck in Spain awaiting extradition or in the US or or anywhere else on the planet. Cryptocurrencies is for everybody, and they they need to go head to head and compete with the US dollar and the euro and the yen and the ruble and everything else because when people have more choices, their lives are better off, and it results in more economic freedom.

More economic freedom results in more economic growth, and more economic growth raises everybody's standard of living, which literally makes every single person's life on the planet better off. And that's why it's such an exciting thing for for me to be involved in. And that's why I'm doing it despite risking a a 109 years in federal prison for just telling people about these, amazing ideas and technologies.

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And that was enough to kind of derail the promise. I should note that you are rich from Bitcoin. I mean and you could very easily kind of not say anything and just be happily rich with Bitcoin because you bought a lot of it early. And so it sounds like your ideological commitment is overriding your financial interests.

It's not not even close for me. So, like, I was a multimillionaire before Bitcoin had ever even been invented. I had my own tech companies in Silicon Valley that had done very well for me. Lots of people talk about, oh, win win Lambo, and I must sell my Bitcoin and buy a Lambo. I had had multiple Lamborghinis before Bitcoin had ever even been invented.

When Bitcoin came along, I was such a big believer in Bitcoin that I sold my Lamborghini to buy more Bitcoin. That's how excited I was about this philosophically, and and emotionally, and and intellectually, because this is literally 1 of the best tools the world has ever seen to give individuals more control over their own lives. And so I was headed in the exact opposite direction of most of the people that are involved in Bitcoin today. I was selling things to buy more Bitcoin because I knew this was gonna become money for the world. And today, maybe it'll be Bitcoin, maybe it'll be a different cryptocurrency, but cryptocurrencies are still certainly the the way of the future, and and have the and remember, today, it's 2024, when Bitcoin first came out, there was no Apple Pay, there was no Zelle, there was barely any of this thing.

Like there was almost no competition, but governments successfully delayed the adoption of cryptocurrencies, so that now suddenly the traditional financial systems had a chance to catch up and get a lot more done, and it's just really, really frustrating because life is short. As as as anybody you know, as each year goes by, they go by faster and faster, and there's less and less of each of our lifespans left. We need the benefits brought by cryptocurrency as soon as possible. And we know all the benefits for the world as soon as possible. Like, let's not waste time if that's exactly what governments around the world have been doing.

They've been delaying and, hindering the adoption of cryptocurrency as money, which is literally delaying the progress of all of humankind and all of human society, and it's really frustrating to to see that happen.

The most frustrating, part from my perspective is the inability to use cryptocurrency apparently with any privacy. I mean, that that is the core promise. I'll be you know, I earned the money, didn't do anything wrong, And I would like to buy something that's sort of no one's business, whether I'm buying it or not. And I would like to do that in privacy. I don't think that's a a weird thing to want.

It's a human thing to want. And, is that possible? That's my question. Is is it now possible to conduct any kind of business with crypto anonymously?

So in the early days, everybody thought Bitcoin was basically anonymous, and and people treated it that way. And then websites came up that were selling things that, governments might not necessarily want you to buy, and people were using Bitcoin for that because they thought it was basically anonymous. And then later on, we found out that it wasn't anonymous at all, but additional steps were taken to make Bitcoin even less anonymous. And today, most people are just using custodial wallets, which are you know, it's not even a wallet. It's just an account, and it's no more private than your, you know, Bank of America or or PayPal account.

In fact, it's even less private than those things because anybody can take a look at the blockchain and see what's there. But luckily, there's other cryptocurrencies out there that do give people more privacy. So there's things like Monero, which most people are now using, if they want some privacy, but there's even more exciting technologies and coins out there. There's another 1 called Xano that allows anybody to create their own privacy token in which nobody can see what's going on. And if you really wanna get the the 3 letter agencies upset or governments upset, there's a project called confidential layer, which is creating a bridge from Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, and Ethereum onto Xano.

So you can take Bitcoin with no privacy at all or Ethereum with no privacy at all and bridge it permissionlessly with no custodian and no central point of attack onto Xano. And when it's on Xano, you have very, very strong privacy with that as well. And so I think that's gonna make a whole lot more privacy come to the entire, cryptocurrency ecosystem, but governments are gonna hate that. Like Monero that I mentioned before, it's preemptively banned from being listed on most exchanges in most of the world at this point, and that's simply because governments have much less of an ability to spy on people that are using things like Monero or Zeno. And that's why I'm a big fan of things like Monero or Zeno today.

When in fact, today I would be embarrassed to promote I am embarrassed to promote Bitcoin to people today because the transactions are slow, expensive, unreliable, and you have no privacy. I'd be proud to promote something like a Monero or a Zeno or a Zcash or a Zcoin or any of these privacy tools out there because those are the ones that provide more individual control to people and more privacy and more economic freedom to people over the world. People are claiming that Bitcoin is freedom money, but I'm really afraid that they're literally building the financial prison walls around themselves. Like if you look at what's going on in El Salvador, everybody's excited about Bitcoin there, but they're all using custodial accounts that the government can see every single transaction you're making, and they can freeze your account at any time. That's the exact opposite of economic freedom.

That's economic government control. And so anybody that's paying attention should be really, really concerned about this, and they should be advocating the use of cryptocurrencies in which individuals can actually have control of their own money, and have control over their own lives, their own destiny. And maybe that'll be Bitcoin, thanks to this new technology called confidential layer that bridges it onto XANO, but And I don't know what it's gonna be, but like we need to be really, really careful because it could wind up that we've before we know it and before we realize it, we've built the financial prison walls around us, and it's too late to get out and too late to escape. So let's, let's be aware of this today and, and and, you know, watch out.

A lot of people in the crypto world, I think, are admirable people. I'm I'm friends with some of them. 1 you mentioned, actually, people I, like and admire and largely agree with. But I'm a little bit confused as to why you're the only person I've ever heard say what you just said. Why aren't the people promoting various cryptocurrencies also sounding the alarm that none of the transactions you conduct using these currencies are private?

In fact, they're very easily trackable by government. Why is nobody saying that?

Because the censorship and propaganda works. Lots of people are saying that, but very few people other than myself have a a big enough platform or a loud enough voice to get much attention. And because I had such a big, you know, platform and big voice, boom, suddenly I'm looking at a 109 years in prison. I I don't think that's a coincidence at all. And, again, if the the the solution to ideas or people saying things that you don't agree with is more debate and more discussion and more free speech, whereas the the most of the people promoting Bitcoin at this point, they've taken the exact opposite.

They've been supporting the the propaganda and the censorship, which, you know, I I'm on the exact opposite. In fact, initially, when the debate started happening as to what should be the proper scaling method for Bitcoin, my heart was already on what was called like the big block side, but I wanted to be open to the other arguments, and so I was just quiet and started listening. And as I tried to listen, suddenly 1 side started to try and censor the other side, and I already knew I was on the side of free speech. And so as soon as 1 side tried to censor the other side, I knew, okay. It's time for me to speak up now.

I'm on the side of free speech, and I'm on the side of Bitcoin being able to scale in the original way that that, you know, the Bitcoin white paper described as peer to peer cash for the entire world. That's very different than just this speculative asset. Everyone today is excited. Bitcoin's about almost $100,000. Maybe it would have been $100,000 half a decade ago if it hadn't been hijacked and hadn't been destroyed in its usefulness, Ashcraft for the world.

So, you need to look at what's seen and what's not seen. And what we see today, okay, it's close to a $100,000. What's not seen is what it could have been if companies like Microsoft and Expedia and these other big companies around the world didn't have to stop accepting Bitcoin because of its slow transaction fees, slow transaction times, and unreliable transactions, and lack of privacy as well. So it's really disappointing, but, thank you for giving me a platform to help sound the alarm because I don't want to see the entire world wind up imprisoning themselves inside of some sort of, you know, financial prison that they're building, even if it has a cool sounding name like Bitcoin.

Who is Satoshi?

I don't know. And, there if anybody knows, I'm not aware of that, but whoever he is or wherever he is, he literally invented 1 of the most important things in the entire history of humankind up there on par with how important the invention of electricity or the transistor or the Internet was. It really is 1 of the most world changing technologies ever, And so whoever he is, wherever he is, or or they are or she is, they deserve their privacy because clearly that what's that's what they want.

So it it doesn't sound like you're suspicious that Bitcoin was created by the intel agencies as a way as a kind of trap for people?

I I don't I don't think it was created that way initially, but I am suspicious, and I do think that the intel agencies and and other groups have converted it and hijacked it into becoming a a financial trap.

I I just wanna apologize. But we were we were or I was laughing off camera saying you're such you're so great at explaining this. No wonder they wanna put you in prison. I shouldn't have laughed at that as sort of an awful thing to say because they actually are trying to put you in prison. And so rather than making fun of something so awful, I would love to know if you think you're actually gonna go to prison.

Is there any way to stop this?

Yeah. There's a lot of ways to stop this, but the the most useful way I think is to get the the public to speak out. Right? Like, the more people that speak out, the the safer all of us can be. And so 1 of the the most egregious things here too is, like, the IRS with guns on their hip, they literally showed up at my attorney's office.

And my accountant's office, they raided my attorney's office. Right? You're not supposed to be able to do that in the US, like, you're supposed to be able to to talk to your attorneys, and that's supposed to be private. And so, all the information is available, over at, a website that supporters set up at free roger now dot org. They recently filed what's called a motion to dismiss, where you can literally see for your with your own eyes, the, the US government is literally lying in their indictment, and the proof is up there with the emails between myself and my attorneys.

You can go and see. I please go take a look at it. Don't take my word for it. Like, take a look at that motion to dismiss. They're lying.

They're lying to the court in Spain. They're just lying every which way because they don't want the world to know the truth about cryptocurrencies, that they can be used to empower individuals to have control of their own lives beyond the control of politicians who have never met you, and they don't know about you in your life, and most of them don't care about you 1 bit. So, like, the fact that now people anywhere on the planet have access to money that can they can use it to escape inflation, or they can use it to escape other, you know, oppressionary tactics. Cryptocurrency is an amazing, amazing tool for freedom around the world, and governments are the opposite of freedom. They don't like people having more freedom, and that's why they don't like cryptocurrency, and that's why they're they're trying to shut me up.

I I I wish I had even more hard proof, but I I don't think it's a coincidence. They arrested me as soon as my book came out, and I was about to go on a big media tour promoting the fact that bitcoin has been hijacked, and suddenly they had me arrested and tossed into jail for a month in in, in Barcelona, and they were furious that I got out on bail, but this is the first media interview I've done since I've been out. I've been out over 6 months now. This is a really, really big deal for the entire world. This isn't just an American thing.

This is literally affects every single person on the planet. And so, like, another example of that is, you know, Apple. People over the world use iPhones. Apple's an American company, but it affects every single person on the planet. Every year new Apple products come out, people all over the planet that aren't Americans also get to benefit from it.

Americans get to benefit from it. Everybody gets to benefit from it. It's the same with cryptocurrencies. Everybody on the planet, even if it's somebody working on it in in the US or Spain or somewhere else, everybody on the planet gets to benefit from it. And, and, you know, and by benefit from it, I mean they get to have more control over their own lives, their own finances, their own financial sovereignty.

Governments hate that. That's why they're trying to stop it, and and that's why they don't want you to read hijacking Bitcoin so you can hear with, you know, citations for everything how Bitcoin was hijacked, and people are promoting it today as literally the exact opposite of what it started out as.

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Spend this Christmas working on something that matters, your relationship with God. Maybe the only thing that matters. We hope you will. Hallow. I'm a little bit surprised that the government of Spain is honoring the extradition request.

I mean, the US government just sent a $100,000,000,000 to Ukraine without an audit to the most corrupt country in Europe. A $100,000,000,000 didn't even bother to audit it. You know, and a huge percentage is being stolen. We know that. They don't care.

So the idea that the US government is so upset that you, a non citizen, didn't pay US taxes, which you're not even obligated to pay, is like absurd on its face. How did the Spanish government participate in what's obviously a grotesque miscarriage of justice? Why would they play along with Yeah.

If I can interject, not only are they mad about the the taxes. I wasn't an American, and I wasn't living in the US. Right? This is like it's so good. I was not American, not living in the US, and they're claiming I owe the more US taxes on the Bitcoin.

Like, it's just absolute insanity. But if you look at it, when there's a political persecution, they just have to make stuff up so they can grab the people, and the most common way they do it is they use the government tax code, because it's so incredibly complicated. Even people that want to comply with every last little detail on how the best professionals, like I did myself, it's too complicated. They can get you if they want you, and that's what they do time and time again. And so in regards to the Spanish government, I have an amazing attorney here, Jaime Campanier.

I I'm really hoping that he's gonna be successful here. He's optimistic about the whole situation, but you don't know, and it's a really terrifying way to live day to day. If I win, and Spain decides not to extradite me, they'll send me or my attorney a letter and say, congratulations. You're you're not being extradited. If I lose, and they decide to extradite me, they don't tell me in advance, there'll just be a knock at my door 1 morning, and they'll they'll grab me, and they'll put me in jail, and I'll have 0 notice whatsoever.

I won't be able to return the rental car, or tell the landlord, or anything else. They'll literally just come to my house, grab me 1 morning, and I won't know in advance which morning it's gonna be. It'll just happen 1 morning, and so it's not a fun way to live day to day knowing if this is your last day not in prison potentially for the rest of your entire life. And, so but I'm cautiously optimistic that Spain will be able to see through this, and see what a politically motivated persecution this is by a bunch of people that are just jealous. Like if I hadn't been treated so unfairly politically the last time around when I ran for political office and tried to change the system within, I'd still be, you know, a proud flag waving American today, and I still The values of my heart are still some of the most American values there are, and if you think about it, people say, oh, you renounced your US citizen that, you know, the ship.

That's not very patriotic. Are you kidding? That's exactly the values that America was founded on. It was a bunch of British people that renounced their citizenship and said, I don't like laws you guys are passing. I'm not gonna be a part of this anymore.

So renouncing your citizenship is actually 1 of the most patriotic American esque things you can possibly do, and, I I hope the Spanish government will be able to see. Like, I've been out there, you know, speaking out to the world about the benefits of cryptocurrency. The US government has the most to lose because the dollar is the world reserve currency, so they like it less than even other governments. This is clearly a politically motivated persecution, and my faith and hope and you know, my dreams are with the Spanish government to not extradite me at this point, and I hope they do the right thing, and they can see what's going on. But, I also, you know, have Maybe I can beat the whole thing at trial as well, but, you know, you never know.

You're rolling the dice there, even though I'm completely innocent. But we also could have the Department of Justice, Nyaris, just drop all the charges because it's completely I'm completely innocent, and, we literally fought this thing all the way to the Supreme Court in regards to my attorney client privilege documents. When they finally finally got access to those documents, they were probably mad because it was me literally telling my attorneys, do everything perfectly. Do everything perfectly. I don't wanna have any problems.

And so they had a big giant letdown. So there was a Supreme Court case in regards to myself. People need to understand how insane it is that the IRS raided my tax attorney, their their office. How can you raid someone's attorney's office to violate attorney client privilege in the US? That's the stuff that all the US propaganda wants you to believe goes on in Russia all the time and other countries, but they're doing it right, you know, right there at home, and then where I was born and raised in the United States of America.

It's insane that that's going on. So president Biden can do the right thing. He just recently, you know, pardoned his son. He can empty, he can issue a preemptive pardon for me. Trump, when he gets into office, if anybody knows what it's like to be the the victim of lawfare, it's Trump.

So I think he'll be able to see it, in this case as well. He can, issue a preemptive pardon for me as well, and a bunch of other people that deserve it. I'm I'm not the only 1. Right? There's a whole long list of people out there that have been the victim of lawfare.

And, more often than not, it's people that are engaged in something that the US doesn't like politically. And, if you if you rock the boat, and the deep state doesn't like it, they're gonna come after you. And, I'm just 1 more in that long, long, long list of people that they've, they've attacked and and trying to destroy their lives.

If if I wasn't in this business, I wouldn't believe any of this. I wouldn't think anything you were saying was true. I've just seen it so often. Just just a specific point. Are you allowed to leave Spain or are you imprisoned by Spain?

Can you or can you leave the country?

So, no. Not only can I not leave the country, I'm on a island in Spain, off the coast of Spain called Mallorca? I'm not even allowed to leave this, island. I'm not allowed to go on a boat. I'm not allowed to do anything, and, every 48 hours, I have to check-in with the court and show them my ID and prove that I didn't run away.

And again, any day could be my last year. If they decide they are going to extradite me, they'll just show up unannounced and and arrest me here in Spain, and put me back in the Spanish prison, and then at some point, ship me to the US, prison as well. And so that's like a a pretty nerve wracking way to to live day after day, here in Spain. So I'm, Spain's a wonderful country, but I would love to be here voluntarily.

What it's it's shocking that Spain can act as the jailers for the US government on transparently fake charges. What's so you already spent a month in Spanish prison? What was that like?

My Spanish is certainly better than it was before that happened.

I bet. You you know prison slang.

Yeah. And it actually because I'm such a, you know, clean-cut, well spoken guy, there were, a couple of other people in the prison started to think I must be some sort of an American undercover spy spying on the prison. So, like, some of the other inmates were really wary of me and didn't wanna speak to me. And luckily, nobody, you know, found out who I was or what my role was in regards to to cryptocurrency, but, some people were awfully suspicious of me, and, I was very glad to to get out when I finally did. And the US government was very angry that they granted me bail here in Spain.

They wanted to hold me in jail in Spain the entire time in a country, you know, I I think this was only the 2nd time I'd ever even visited Spain ever. I thought I was only gonna be here for 4 days. There was was a cryptocurrency conference, about privacy cryptocurrencies here, about Zeno and Monero, and things like that. I thought I was just gonna be here for that, and I was in the hotel lobby, after the conference, and some guy I didn't know came up to me with a thick Spanish accent and said, are you Roger Ver? And I said, yes.

And Roger Ver? Yes. And like 3 or 4 times back and forth, and when I finally convinced him that I was Roger Ver, and that we had overcome the language barrier, and I thought he was a crypto guy. He wanted to ask for like a, you know, autograph copy of my book or talk about crypto or something. Then he pulled out his badge and said that he has an Interpol arrest warrant.

They arrested me right there in the in the lobby of the hotel in in Barcelona, and and, you know, hauled me off to jail in Spain. And, boy, was I not expecting, that 1 bit to to happen. And talk about having your world turned upside down, but it just makes me even more motivated because cryptocurrencies are such an powerful, powerful tool for every human being on the planet. How could I not be quiet about spreading this good message to everybody, around the world? So, congratulations, America.

You made me even more motivated to spread cryptocurrency adoption to the world.

That is just 1 of the craziest stories I I think I've ever heard. Roger, godspeed. We are just rooting for you fervently, and I I hope this helps in some small way. Anyway, you're you're in our thoughts. Thank you.

My pleasure, Tucker. And if I can ask people that, want to show their support, please head over to free roger now dot org, and I would deeply appreciate that.

Thank you. Good luck. Thanks for listening to Tucker Carlson Show. If you enjoyed it, you can go to tucker dotcom to see everything that we have made, the complete library. Tucker carlson.com.