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$1 Million Bitcoin Donation Honors 2-Year Old Bet Against Gold, Silver and Stocks

Roger Ver is CEO of MemoryDealers.com, a leading seller of used memory and networking equipment. MemoryDealers was one of the first mainstream businesses to accept Bitcoin as payment. Ver is also an early investor in Bitcoin and an angel investor in Bitcoin startups.

In August 2011, Roger Ver made a public bet that Bitcoin would outperform Gold, Silver, the US Stock Market and the US Dollar by 100X over the next two years. The size of the bet was $10,000 in Bitcoin.

At the time Bitcoin was worth $10. Today the currency is worth over $1000, making the original bet amount over $1,000,000.

Here’s the original video Roger Ver posted in August 2011 with the transcript below.

Recently I have noticed a lot of videos on youtube where people are saying that Bitcoins are a scam, a Ponzi scheme, or otherwise a bad idea. I disagree, so I would like to invite those people to put their money where their mouth is.

I’m willing to bet $10,000 USD or equivalent in Bitcoins, that over the next 2 years, Bitcoins will not only outperform the stock market, Gold, Silver, and the US dollar, but Bitcoins will do it by more than 100 times.

This means that I am willing to bet that if Silver is up by %100 over the next two years, I think Bitcoin will be up by more than 10,000%. Today is August 4th, 2011 and bitcoins are about $10.

Two years later, Ver actually lost the bet, but only by a few months. Instead of winning 1000 Bitcoin, Ver decided to pay his losses to charity out of his own pocket. Here’s the video he published with the announcement.

Transcript from this video:

I’m Roger Ver,  CEO of http://www.MemoryDealers.com,
A little over 2 years ago,  I made a bet for $10,000 that Bitcoin would outperform gold, silver, the US stock market, and the USD by more than 100 x over the next two years.

I’m here today to say that I was wrong,  In reality it took about two years and two months for Bitcoin to outperform everything else by more than 100x.
Over that time, gold and silver are down, the stock market is up about 45%, but Bitcoin is up more than 15,000%,  or more than  300x everything else.

In the preceding time,  we have seen the use of Bitcoin spread to millions of users around the world.  Bitcoin businesses such ashttp://www.Bitpay.com, http://www.Coinbase.com,http://www.Blockchain.info, and more, have received tens of millions of dollars in VC funding, and are expanding their operations into countries around the globe.

Shopping cart platforms like http://www.shopify.com with over 70,000 stores have integrated Bitcoin as a payment method.

Point of sale software companies have begun to integrate Bitcoin into their systems that will soon allow bitcoin to be easily accepted at millions of physical locations, and http://www.LocalBitcoins.comalready seems to have buyers and sellers in nearly every town on the planet.

True business professionals are making Bitcoin projects their full time jobs, and it is nearly impossible to read the financial news without hearing about Bitcoin.

Because of all these exciting developments,  I’m more confident than ever that Bitcoin is on it’s way to mainstream adoption,  and changing the lives of everyone on the planet for the better.

However,  since I was off by a few months regarding the time frame for the bet,  I’ve decided to donate 1,000 Bitcoins, that were worth only $10,000 at the time I made the bet,  but are now worth well over $1,000,000 USD,  to the organization that published the books and articles that allowed me to understand just how important Bitcoin would become.  That organization is the Foundation for Economic Education,  or http://www.FEE.org.
By reading books, and essays published by this organization from such intellectual giants as Murray Rothbard, and others,  I learned that those who want to control their neighbor’s  activities through the violence of the state, are economically ignorant,  morally deplorable, and will always fail to reach their desired goals.

I will proudly continue to promote Bitcoin full time because I see it as the best chance the world has ever seen at creating a more peaceful society in which all human interactions are voluntary,  and outside groups of people calling themselves the state are no longer able to violently interject themselves into the affairs of others.  If these ideas are of interest to you,  or you simply want to know more about my motivation for becoming involved with Bitcoin,  I would ask you to google Voluntaryism, the Non Aggression Principle, or read anything by Murray Rothbard.

Most importantly,  continue to use Bitcoin every chance you have, in both your private, and professional life.
It is one of the most important inventions ever created.

Today is Nov 30th 2013,  and Bitcoin is about $1100 USD.

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