‘Bitcoin Jesus’ says Ethereum is the front-runner for global crypto adoption

Early Bitcoin (BTC) investor and Bitcoin Cash (BCH) advocate Roger Ver claimed that Ethereum, not Bitcoin, will be responsible for driving the bulk of new users towards crypto. 

On a May 31 episode of the Show Me The Crypto podcast, Ver — labeled “Bitcoin Jesus” for his early Bitcoin advocacy — said that despite Ethereum’s scaling issues and the other layer-one “clones” that have popped up in its wake, the Ethereum ecosystem is still where the action is:

“Even though Ethereum doesn’t have the biggest market cap compared to Bitcoin, I think Ethereum is the front-runner in terms of driving worldwide adoption.”

Ver praised the rise of Ethereum Virtual Machine-compatible (EVM) blockchains and layer-2 scaling solutions such as Polygon (MATIC) that can help share some of the load away from the main chain.

Ver provides an account of the “civil war” that occurred in the early days of Bitcoin between Etheruem’s co-founder Vitalik Buterin and Bitcoin core developers.

Disagreements over the use of smart contracts and moving away from the idea of blockchains being used purely as currency or stores of value eventually drove Buterin to develop Ethereum, Ver noted:

“All of that would have been built on top of Bitcoin if not for the scaling civil war that happened. These Bitcoin core developers hate Vitalik, and they basically drove him from the project to go and create Ethereum, and more power to him for that.”

Ver also spoke on the recent Ledger debate, calling the controversial Recover service “disappointing.” The service allows users to store their encrypted seed phase with external custodians to safeguard against loss; Ver said that while it’s fine for people to have custodial accounts and choose to recover their keys if they wish, the ethos of crypto is centered on having full control of your assets at all times.

Related: Hybrid rollups: The silver bullet for scalability and security on Ethereum

In January, Ver was sued by a trading unit of the crypto lending firm Genesis for failing to pay some $20.8 million in unsettled crypto options.

Ver claimed in a January Reddit post that he had “sufficient funds” to pay the outstanding sum but argued that because Genesis was no longer solvent, he was not legally required to uphold his end of the deal.

On the topic of #Genesis: https://t.co/2a0fYu5P3E pic.twitter.com/a6tA0HISMo

— Roger Ver (@rogerkver) January 25, 2023

Last year, Ver made headlines for allegations of defaulting on a debt. CoinFLEX CEO Mark Lamb claimed Ver owed the firm $47 million USD Coin (USDC) and was bound by a written contract. On June 28, Ver denied these claims without directly mentioning the company.

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