Bitcoin Billionaire Roger Ver Sued by Genesis For $21 Million Debt – Here’s What Happened
The early Bitcoin (BTC) evangelist and now Bitcoin Cash (BCH) proponent Roger Ver has been sued by the now-bankrupt crypto lender Genesis after failing to meet a $21m margin call.
The court action taken by Genesis is related to a crypto options trade that expired late last year, and that Roger Ver – who is often called “Bitcoin Jesus” for his early evangelism – allegedly never settled.
Genesis seeks “money damages for defendant’s failure to settle cryptocurrency options transactions that expired on Dec. 30, 2022, in an amount to be determined at trial but no less than $20.9 million,” the lawsuit filing said.
The filing was made by GGC International Ltd., an entity registered in the British Virgin Islands that is part of Genesis’ corporate structure.
Genesis filed for bankruptcy under Chapter 11 of the US Bankruptcy Code on January 19. An announcement from the company at the time made it clear that the filing did not apply to Genesis subsidiaries involved in derivatives and spot trading as well as custody businesses.
Genesis and its affiliated entities are a part of Barry Silbert’s massive crypto conglomerate Digital Currency Group (DCG).
Roger Ver has so far not commented on the lawsuit.
On Twitter, some users poked fun of Ver, saying that he likely couldn’t pay his debts because he moved away from BTC and instead “went full crypto degen:”
Second case involving Ver
The lawsuit from Genesis comes just months after Ver was served a notice of default by the crypto derivatives exchange and yield platform CoinFLEX over unpaid debts.
According to Mark Lamb, CEO of CoinFLEX, Ver owed the exchange $47m in the stablecoin USDC. The CEO said that his exchange had “a written contract with [Ver] obligating him to personally guarantee any negative equity on his CoinFLEX account and top up margin regularly.”
“He is denying that the debt pertains to him and so we felt the need to clarify to the public that yes – the debt is 100% related to his account,” Lamb said at the time, while adding that they have already served a notice of default.
Roger Ver has publicly denied that he owes CoinFLEX any money, and has even claimed that it is the exchange that owes him money:
