John McAfee’s Cryptocurrency Bad Trips: The History of Madness
By Richard G on ALTCOIN MAGAZINE
There is something wrong with crypto influencers
There are a lot of things that John McAfee’s name can be associated with, but it’s definitely not a global computer security software company he had founded in 1987 and sold in 1994.
Today, when someone hears “John McAfee”, most likely he thinks about the wild lifestyle, drugs, insane videos with lots of women and bath salts use, presidential election participation and many other crazy things, including a strange obsession with guns and shadowy Belize past.
But all of it was before 2017. Now the world of media has a new synonym for McAfee’s name: “the spokesman for the crypto bubble”, as New York Magazine’s Intelligencer has called him in its recent article.
Since 2017, McAfee has become the most quoted and popular crypto influencer, using his extensive Twitter fanbase to propagate a variety of different thoughts and ideas about the future of cryptocurrency industry.
The so-called “Crypto Jesus” has made a lot of strange and contradictory statements over the last couple of years, and it’s absolutely crazy how all these statements have only added to his popularity, as well as to the popularity of Bitcoin and other currencies. Apparently, there is something profoundly wrong with the image of cryptocurrency these days, since it’s accompanied by this type of influencers.
Let’s remember the craziest McAfee’s declarations.
On July 2017 McAfee stated that Bitcoin would be worth $500,000 by 2020 and, if not, he would eat his dick on national TV:
With the rise of BTC at the end of 2017 Mcafee concluded that his initial prognosis was slightly wrong. So his new statement was that Bitcoin price would be $1 million by the end of 2020. If not, he was still ready to eat his dick.
Later, in an interview with News BTC, he predicted that Bitcoin would become a new gold standard and one more time confirmed his promise about Bitcoin price being $1 million by the end of 2020, even though by that moment his initial prognosis was 57% below the schedule. By the way, now it is 88.56% below the schedule:
Well, it seems like something is deeply wrong with McAfee’s methods of assessment of Bitcoin price fluctuations.
You can find more information on the current cryptocurrency market conditions in my previous articles on the subject:
What Should You Do With Bitcoin Now?
Is It The Best Time To Short Sell Bitcoin?
At some point, McAfee stated that he had participated in the creation of an unhackable hardware Bitcoin wallet, Bifti. According to him, the wallet was absolutely invulnerable to any kind of hacker attack. The wallet turned out to be not so reliable: it was hacked a week later. After that, it was hacked the second time, and this time users not only hacked the device but also run DOOM, the iconic video game, on it.
Despite all the wrong predictions and crazy declarations, McAfee remains the most important crypto influencer even now, according to the survey performed by blockchain-focused research company Clovr. His closest competitors are Vitalik Buterin and Charlie Lee, creator of Litecoin:
McAfee has become so widely recognized and popular in the crypto world for a variety of reasons.
First of all, by the beginning of the widespread cryptocurrency movement of 2017, he’s already had an enormous Twitter fan-base and a self-proclaimed status of a man who “fucking invented cybersecurity”, thanks to his past of a high-profile cybersecurity businessman. Together with his rebellious media image and the well-known wild lifestyle, it has made McAfee an ideal symbol for the cryptocurrency movement: a technical guru who rises against the world’s financial system and guards the foundation of the new world’s freedom.
McAfee’s claims and predictions have actually had an enormous effect on cryptocurrency prices. It seems like a single McAfee’s tweet about any no-name altcoin could skyrocket its price from almost zero right to the moon, making its holders rich all of a sudden. Apparently, it’s been McAfee’s primary motivation: to get money for the promotion of different altcoins.
It’s interesting that pumping the cryptocurrency prices through media buzz was not McAfee’s first experience with financial markets. Earlier, he participated in the promotion of a penny-stock company called MGT Capital Investments. McAfee’s actions had led company shares to climb more than eightfold in 2016. After the hype had subsided, the company stocks’ prices fell back to almost zero and the company was announced to be delisted from the New York Stock Exchange. So McAfee had already had a solid experience by the beginning of cryptocurrency hype.
All of these McAfee’s crazy media marketing campaigns were possibly a good thing for the promoted coins’ developers and holders, but not for the industry itself.
As I mentioned earlier, the hype which accompanied the cryptocurrency industry in 2017–2018 was mostly a negative phenomenon for the development and adoption of blockchain technology and digital funds.
While cryptocurrency prices skyrocketed to the moon, the technology behind it couldn’t maintain the same rates of growth in its development and adoption. Moreover, the existing market bubble had managed to create a bad image for the cryptocurrency field, which turned over many serious investors and slowed down cryptocurrency adoption by the world’s governments. Together with that, the hype which followed crypto in 2017–2018 has led to the crypto field a lot of scammers, creating even more damage for cryptocurrency public image.
I want to believe that further development of cryptocurrency field will rely on real value and not on hype and populist statements. Thankfully, there are many factors pointing that this will be the case.
The 2017–2018 were stressful years for many people who were somehow concerned with the cryptocurrency industry.
But Crypto Jesus is used to any kind of stress. John McAfee’s living is quite stressful on itself. Not for him only, though:
Yeah, this world is strange as hell.
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