
Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht, recently released from jail, spoke out in favor of jailed Bitcoin supporter Roger Ver , also known as Bitcoin Jesus. “Roger Ver was there for me,” wrote Ulbricht on X, “when I was down and needed help. Now Roger needs our help. No one should spend the rest of their life in prison over taxes”. The post was made on February 20, and it rallied his own supporters to support the ‘free Bitcoin Jesus’ movement. As Ulbricht rightly points out, Roger Ver faces life in prison over unpaid Bitcoin taxes. It started in 2014 when Roger sought Japanese residency instead of American. The US authorities claim that Roger didn’t follow the exit tax procedures properly and are currently seeking extradition so that Roger can face 109 years behind bars. The IRS, America’s tax department, requires anyone renouncing their citizenship to pay all outstanding taxes before exiting the American tax system. Roger’s defense team, however, claims that the IRS didn’t follow proper procedures. Tax workers interrogated Roger’s attorney and staff while not executing a warrant. Supporters of Roger further argue that the IRS case rests on a misinterpretation of exit tax law. The betting markets, such as Polymarket, predict a 10% likelihood of Roger’s release within the first hundred days of Trump’s presidency. Roger has spoken out, claiming that reporting assets is complicated when investing in an emerging market. Furthermore, the markets Roger was involved in were illiquid and difficult to convert into cash. Roger’s defense team claims that the exit tax laws are unreasonably vague. They further point out that Roger took all the steps available at the time, considering the circumstances, and tried to follow the rules. On January 22, Trump pardoned Ross Ulbricht for his involvement in the Silk Road, an anonymous marketplace that used Bitcoin for transactions. Ulbricht had been serving a life sentence since 2015 and maintained his innocence the entire time, spurring the ‘Free Ross’ movement. The case against him was started in 2013 by federal agents and has also been shut down. The Free Roger campaign has many supporters, including those who supported the Free Ross campaign for so many years. Even Elon Musk has voiced support for freeing Roger Ver. There are mixed reactions, with some claiming that Roger’s case is very different from Ulbricht’s. However, Ulbricht and Roger were early adopters of Bitcoin, finding practical ways to use the new technology when most people were still wondering if it would last. Therefore, many people in the cryptocurrency community see a strong parallel between the two Bitcoin uses, especially since they both faced life in prison and battled against a draconian American tax department. While Roger invested in startups like Kraken and BitPay, Ulbricht created the Silk Road. Not surprisingly, Roger Ver, an early Bitcoin pioneer, was involved in the Blocksize Wars, advocating for bigger blocks so that Bitcoin could be used easily by regular people to make transactions.
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Report: SEC Concludes Opensea Probe, Drops Enforcement Threat Over NFTs

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has reportedly ended its investigation into Opensea and will not pursue enforcement action against the non-fungible token (NFT) marketplace over allegations that its NFTs constituted unregistered securities, the company confirmed to Bloomberg this week. Following Coinbase, SEC Ends OpenSea Investigation Under Trump’s Regulatory Climate Opensea, a leading nonfungible ZyCrypto

Ethereum Price Could Still Reclaim $4,000 Based On This Bullish Divergence
The Ethereum price appeared to be finally gearing for a strong bullish breakout after multiple weeks of disappointing and sluggish action. However, this bullish dream ended almost immediately after it started as nearly $1.5 billion worth of ETH tokens were drained from the ByBit exchange. Ethereum, which traded as high as $2,840 earlier on Friday, February 21, dropped towards $2,600 on the back of news of the ByBit hack. Interestingly, recent on-chain data suggests that the altcoin’s price could still make its way to $4,000 before the end of this cycle. Could ETH Price Still Record A 60% Rally This Cycle? In a Quicktake post on the CryptoQuant platform, an analyst with the pseudonym Crypto Sunmoon identified a particular bullish divergence that offers insight into the Ethereum price performance in the near future. This bullish observation is based on recent movements of ETH’s “taker buy/sell ratio” across all exchanges. Related Reading: Dogecoin Price On The Edge: Breakout Or Breakdown—What’s Next? This metric measures the taker buy and taker sell volumes for a specific cryptocurrency (Ethereum, in this case). When the taker buy/sell ratio is greater than one, it implies that the taker buy volume is higher than the taker sell volume. This is typically considered a bullish signal, indicating the willingness of investors to pay a higher price for an asset. On the contrary, a less-than-one taker buy/sell ratio indicates that sellers are overwhelming the buyers in the market. This scenario suggests that more sellers are willing to offload their assets at a lower price, signaling a bearish shift in investor sentiment. Crypto Sunmoon noted that the 100-day exponential moving average (EMA) of the Ethereum taker buy/sell ratio on all exchanges has been rising in recent weeks. The Ethereum price, on the other hand, has been declining since mid-December. According to the analyst, this divergence is positive, as it indicates that a bearish trend has ended and an upward trend could be starting. The last time this bullish divergence occurred, the Ethereum price traveled from beneath $2,500 to above $4,000 (over 60% rally). While investors would view a reclaim of $3,000 as a victory for Ethereum, history and this bullish divergence suggest that the altcoin’s price could still climb toward the $4,000 mark before the end of the current cycle. Ethereum Price At A Glance As of this writing, the price of Ethereum stands around $2,650, reflecting a nearly 4% decline in the past 24 hours. Related Reading: More Pain Ahead For Solana? Dangerous Price Drop To $125 Looms With This Support Retest Featured image from iStock, chart from TradingView ZyCrypto