Is Trump’s Crypto Crusade a Redemption Arc or a Real-Life Soap Opera? 🎭

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Amid the grand theater of human ambition, betrayal, and redemption, the modern-day stage welcomes the peculiar drama of cryptocurrency moguls and fallen titans. Among them stands a man christened “Bitcoin Jesus”—Roger Ver—whose story echoes less the gospel and more an epic Russian novel, filled with blunders, defiance, and the weighty hand of authority. ☦️

Vitalik Buterin, saintly in visage but mischievously radical in thought, joins forces with the infamous Ross Ulbricht (or perhaps a Dostoevskian antihero) and, improbably, Tucker Carlson, as they beseech the decrees of America’s golden-haired czar—President Donald Trump. Their collective prayer? To see Ver pardoned for sins leveled against him by a relentless state apparatus. But alas, what lies in store? Perhaps not divine forgiveness but instead years upon years of dreary Siberian exile—or its 21st-century IRS equivalent. ⛓️

Come closer, dear reader, for the plot thickens with every line…

Table of Contents

Crypto cronies

It would seem that cryptocurrency, once the rebellious child of libertarian dreams, now sleeps peacefully under the gilded roof of power’s mansion. Trump—somewhere between a merchant, a czar, and a meme extraordinaire—has warmed up to blockchain like a bear to honey. The crypto elite? They’ve sang praises louder than an Orthodox choir, pouring their riches into galas and Trump’s inauguration festivities. 🤷‍♂️

Having found himself unexpectedly cast as the protagonist of crypto’s redemption arc, Trump—perhaps with a wink and a nod to his own financial escapades—began signing decrees faster than a Moscow bureaucrat processing bribes. The SEC backed off; subpoenas wilted away like yesterday’s snow, and crypto companies danced in relief in the streets. 💃🕺

The apex of this baroque spectacle? Thursday, March 27: Trump pardoned the co-founders of BitMEX—a trio whose crimes prosecutors had described in dialects reserved only for plans to rob a tsarist treasury. Money laundering? Meh. Bank Secrecy Act violations? Forgettable as last Wednesday’s bread. It was a move that rightly had conspiracy theorists foaming at the mouth. 🕵️‍♀️

In this hallowed crowd of beneficiaries, could poor Roger Ver find himself as the next recipient of such munificence? Or did Bitcoin Jesus’ fate lean closer to that of Tolstoy’s grim-faced peasantry—forgotten, left to rot beneath an indifferent sun?

Ver’s past

In Ver’s boyhood, one might imagine him not unlike a youthful Pierre Bezukhov—idealistic, enamored with philosophical debates and deeply vexing to the regime. At libertarian gatherings (oh, what farmer’s markets for dissenting intellectual seeds!), he railed against the agents of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms. By 20, his words fell like stones against Moscow bureaucrats—though, alas, these stones caught up with him. 🪨⚖️

One fiasco over firecrackers landed him 10 months behind the state’s cold, gray bars—a sentence Ver would interpret not as justice, but vendetta. A budding capitalist prophet who once sold explosives online… If this isn’t the setup for a comedic tragedy, what is? 🎇

By 2011, Ver embraced Bitcoin not just as currency, but creed. Invest in the Kraken! (No, that’s not a Leviathan.) Trust Ripple! (Not the babbling brook.) His empire grew. His faith remained unshaken… until, of course, it was time to renounce his American citizenship in search of St. Kitts and Nevis’ sunlit shores. One can imagine him departing the homeland as Pierre might’ve left a stifling mistress: filled with heartbreak but certain of his principles. 🌴

The legal fight

As accusations of tax evasion rained like cannonballs upon Ver in April 2024, he was left to ponder whether the government sought retribution or merely another scapegoat. Ver claimed innocence, decrying the complexities of his nationless exile and Bitcoin’s fledgling regulations. Yet the feds spoke: “$48 million unpaid. Exit taxes ignored! Letters mailed with falsehood!” (One wonders: How much can even a government wring from three measly letters? Perhaps this is Kafka’s domain, not Tolstoy’s.) 📜

“Fugitive!” cried the authorities. “Misunderstood patriot,” countered Ver. To which someone in the distant peanut gallery might’ve added, with no lack of irony, “Where’s the popcorn?” 🍿

The libertarian thinkfluencers soared into the fray. Vitalik Buterin appealed to Trump’s sense of fairness, opining that Ver’s treatment was akin to sentencing someone to Siberia for accidentally stepping on a czar’s freshly laundered coat. Even Ross Ulbricht chimed in, asking for mercy (and perhaps, secretly, company) for his crypto comrade. 🐦

“Genuine good faith mistakes should be treated by giving the actor the opportunity to pay back taxes.” — Vitalik

Ah, modern discourse—so earnest in one line, so absurd in the next tweet’s emoji-laden rant.

Will Bitcoin Jesus be pardoned?

In this unfolding saga, the final act remains murky. Musk, ever the court jester dabbling in kingly realms, declared Ver unworthy of pardon. “Renounced his citizenship,” barked the Tesla czar. “No membership, no privileges!” One imagines Tolstoy rolling his eyes: What sort of member was Ver supposed to be when the club actively refused him? 🤦‍♂️

And then there’s Trump himself, the man of the hour, who has so far remained silent—a rare turn for such a perfervid narrator of his own legend. Ver appeals directly to his heart with a video, calling himself “an American in spirit, if not in papers.” Supporters gather, tweeting prayers and petitions like townsfolk beseeching their lord for an early harvest. But oh, quiet still hangs heavily. Could Bitcoin Jesus be left outside the gates of this miraculous new Eden?

Let us wait and see, dear reader, for clarity seldom arrives swiftly in dramas of this scale. As we stand on the edge of this Dostoevskian abyss, one must ask: Is it redemption Ver seeks, or is he merely the lightning rod for a storm far beyond his own making? Perhaps, like Levin at the plow, we shall find our answer in time—or perhaps it will escape us altogether. 🚜

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2025-03-29 23:14