'Bitcoin Jesus' Roger Ver Says He Doesn't Have to Pay the $21M He Owes Genesis

Bitcoin evangelist Roger Ver said in a Reddit post yesterday that he has “sufficient funds” to pay now-bankrupt crypto broker Genesis the $21 million he owes, but argued that he doesn’t have to.

“I have sufficient funds on hand to pay Genesis the sums allegedly owed, and I’m happy to pay what I actually owe. However, Genesis was required by our agreement to remain solvent—as Genesis can’t ask its clients to play a “heads clients lose, tails Genesis wins” game,” he wrote in response to a post in the Bitcoin subreddit asking, “Did Roger Ver get rekt?”

Ver, who earned the moniker of "Bitcoin Jesus" as an early adopter of the technology, responded to the post yesterday, then on Wednesday morning shared a screenshot of his comment on Twitter.

The allegations against him were revealed in a summons filed in New York State Supreme Court on Monday by GGC International, a unit of Genesis Global. In it, the company says Ver owes the company $20,869,788 for “failure to settle cryptocurrency options transactions” that expired on December 30.

The Digital Currency Group broker and lending desk filed for bankruptcy on January 20, revealing in court documents that it has more than $150 million to fund its restructuring efforts.

If any of this sounds familiar, it’s because Ver was involved in a similar spat with CoinFLEX last year. The crypto trading platform halted withdrawals in June, citing liquidity problems. It was a common refrain from companies at the time, who were dealing with the fallout from multiple bankruptcies.

But CoinFLEX CEO Mark Lamb claimed on Twitter that Ver owes the company $47 million and said he’d already been issued a default notice for failure to pay up.

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Ver called the claim “blatantly false,” adding that CoinFLEX owed him money, not the other way around.

“Not only do I not have a debt to this counter-party, but this counter-party owes me a substantial sum of money, and I am currently seeking the return of my funds,” he wrote on Twitter.