Roger Ver and shady marketing

Ever used Bitcoin.com? If you haven’t, Bitcoin.com is a domain run by early evangelist Roger Ver. Roger was, for a long time, one of the early believers in Bitcoin, and it’s thanks to him that many people first heard about Bitcoin. Since the Bitcoin Cash split though, Roger has been involved in what could certainly be described as shady marketing tactics to try and improve the hopes of Bitcoin Cash.

The fork has been heavily discussed many times, so let’s not delve too deeply into that here. Instead, let’s discuss the issue of how Roger markets Bitcoin Cash. Many who disapprove of BCH refer to it as Bcash. Roger infamously rage quit an interview with @BitcoinErrorLog at what he deemed to be insulting comments because of this.

Roger Ver, though, does not help his case with his incessant marketing of Bitcoin Cash as the “real Bitcoin”. If one attempts to purchase Bitcoin on Bitcoin.com, they are recommended to buy Bitcoin Cash instead of the original Bitcoin. This is in spite of Bitcoin Cash performing relatively poorly compared to the original chain and Roger’s hopes of taking over Bitcoin appearing further away than ever.

The situation was not helped with the further split of Bitcoin Cash into BCH and BSV. Roger gave Craig Wright the platform to promote Bitcoin Cash only to have this backfire in his face.

If Roger Ver stopped his dubious marketing technique, then the negative attention he receives would probably lessen. Whether Roger would like this is another question, though. Much of the attention towards Bitcoin Cash comes from such antagonism. Without the ‘Bitcoin Cash is the real Bitcoin’ nonsense, then it could mean that BCH would only be talked about within the echo chamber that is the BCH community.

BCH isn’t the only cryptocurrency to employ dubious marketing tactics. The issue is widespread throughout the space, and unfortunately is unlikely to stop anytime soon. The chances of Roger Ver looking at this piece are slim, and there is an even slimmer chance of him looking at it and thinking “damn, what a great idea!”. But it would be nice if Roger could go back to the original evangelism of the original BTC, and there is a chance that even though he has caused a lot of damage, he could recover some of the respect that has been undoubtedly lost.