{"id":183262,"date":"2015-01-13T19:54:00","date_gmt":"2015-01-14T00:54:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2015\/01\/13\/this-is-number-1-on-my-schadenfreude-hit-parade-today\/"},"modified":"2015-01-13T19:54:00","modified_gmt":"2015-01-14T00:54:00","slug":"this-is-number-1-on-my-schadenfreude-hit-parade-today","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2015\/01\/13\/this-is-number-1-on-my-schadenfreude-hit-parade-today\/","title":{"rendered":"This is Number 1 on my Schadenfreude hit Parade Today"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a>You know the story, libertarian boy makes good, doesn’t want to pay taxes, renounces his US citizenship, and is shocked when he is denied an entry visa into the United States<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Roger Ver, a high-profile member of the Bitcoin community who is commonly known as “Bitcoin Jesus,” has been denied a US visa \u2014 despite having been born in the country.<\/span>

<\/span>Ver is well known in the Bitcoin community as an entrepreneur and angel investor, having funded products including Blockchain, Ripple, and Blockpay. He became known as “Bitcoin Jesus” after giving thousands of coins of the virtual currency away for free. Ver was born in the US, making him a citizen there, but he renounced his citizenship in March \u2014 and now he says the government isn’t letting him back in.<\/span>

<\/span>As Coindesk is reporting, Ver posted on Twitter that the US government had refused his recent request for a non-immigrant visa, leaving him “effectively locked out of his native USA.” <\/span>

<\/span>Ver complains that the decision has forced him to miss speaking appointments at conferences and that the US embassy in Barbados refused to even consider the evidence for his application.<\/span>

<\/span>The official reasoning behind Ver’s rejection is that he doesn’t have sufficient “ties” to his country of residency in the Caribbean and has not demonstrated he has “the ties that will compel [him] to return to your home country after your travel to the United States,” according to a picture he tweeted of a letter that appears to be from the embassy.<\/span>

<\/span>In short, US officials are worried that Ver might choose to stay in his native country illegally.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I’m sure that he sees himself as a modern lieutenant Philip Nolan<\/a>, but I think that the rest of us just see him as a self entitled, solipsistic, schmuck.\u20ac<\/sup><\/p>\n

It really could not have happened to a more deserving person.<\/p>\n

H\/t Cthulhu*<\/sup> at the Stellar Parthenon BBS<\/a>.<\/p>\n

*<\/sup>No, not the unspeakably malevolent super-being, the contributor to the Stellar Parthenon<\/a>.<\/span>\u2020<\/sup>
\u2020<\/sup>OK, I’ve never seen the two of them together, so Cthulhu might actually be the Cthulhu, but the mere fact that he is on a BBS, interacting with humans<\/span>\u2021<\/sup> would seem to mitigate against this.<\/span>
\u2021<\/sup>Yes, I know, this is the internet, where no one knows if you are a dog.<\/span>
\u20ac<\/sup>Not really. As anyone with an even passing knowledge, a schmuck has a head, and a turtleneck.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

You know the story, libertarian boy makes good, doesn’t want to pay taxes, renounces his US citizenship, and is shocked when he is denied an entry visa into the United States: Roger Ver, a high-profile member of the Bitcoin community who is commonly known as “Bitcoin Jesus,” has been denied a US visa \u2014 despite …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1100,1053,1019,982,983,979],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-183262","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-funny","category-immigration","category-schadenfreude","category-stupid","category-taxes","category-wanker"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183262"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=183262"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183262\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=183262"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=183262"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=183262"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}