Five Of John McAfee's Most Bats**t Crypto Stunts
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Crypto is a bit like a family. Like all families, it has that one unhinged relative trying to sell everyone on get-rich-quick schemes and conspiracy theories. John McAfee has become a reliable source of entertainment through the bear market: Bitcoin prices go up or down, but Uncle John is an inexhaustible supply of comedy gold.
If you love this show as much as we do, you might appreciate these episodes as enjoyable reruns. For those of you who limit your newsfeed to reliable sources, here’s what you’ve been missing:
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Million-dollar Bitcoins
No need to linger on that prediction. There’s still two years to go before we find out if John McAfee will have to eat his, umm, words. Until then, he’s made plenty of other calls to check up on.
It’s not easy to play fortune teller, but McAfee probably set some kind of record for the most wrong predictions:
Among the recent forecasts:
- “After Singapore, Trump will go to Japan where talks of creating a gold backed US currency will commence.”
- “Bitcoin will surpass 15,000 in June. Will dip in July. “
- “GNT(Golem) will surpass $5 by the end of July.” [Currently $0.22]
- “Bezop will hit $0.52 by mid July.” [Currently $0.09]
- “Bitcoin Private will surpass $200 by the end of July.” [$5.63 and falling]
- “EOS will hit $32 by the end of July.” [$7.12]
And our favorite:
- “[My predictions] have never been wrong.”
2. McAfee 2020
Sometimes if you’re really unlucky, your crazy relative gets the idea to run for office, resulting in enormous embarrassment for the entire family. But enough about Donald Trump.
Crypto Briefing reported on McAfee’s second presidential run when it was first announced, but we had no idea how much of his special sauce would make it into his campaign platform.
Here’s his proposal on healthcare reform, via CryptoSlate:
“Look at the massive amounts of money time and effort that was put into Obamacare, and then the same amount of effort put into unwinding it. And yet, with the blockchain — with Docademic — we have free medical care for everybody.”
Yes, that’s a serious proposal to replace medicare with one of the president’s pet projects, to replace in-person clinics with online telemedicine funded by data sales.
3. The McAfee ICO. Both of them.
As markets took a downturn earlier this year, John fell back on his greatest talent: talking up penny cryptos like a door-to-door Mary Kay rep. But, no longer content with shilling for others, the crypto kingpin launched an ICO of his own.
Ordinarily, we’d expect something called McAfee Coin to be a huge hit. Not only does the founder have the famous name in crypto, shilling ICOs is literally what McAfee does best.
Somehow, things didn’t work out. In a market where investors throw money at the craziest ideas imaginable, McAfee somehow managed to run the only initial coin offering that didn’t raise any money.
Most people would be satisfied driving one business venture into the ground, but John McAfee does not believe in limitations. Shortly after McAfeecoin, the future president announced a separate currency: the McAfee Redemption Unit, a physical, fiat banknote.
You can probably guess how that turned out.
On the plus side, if you’re looking for a website, www.mcafeecoin.com is now available.
4. The Vendetta Against HitBTC
Every eccentric relative is at war with someone, whether it be the Illuminati, the Rothschilds or the Post Office. Over the past few months, McAfee’s favorite bete noire—bigger than Freemasonry and the Federal government combined—is HitBTC.
Going for HitBTC is one of Uncle McAfee’s smarter moves, considering how long the exchange has been circling the drain. Which of HitBTC’s many failings did our future president call them out on?
He was mad that they wouldn’t list Docademic, the McAfee shill of the week.
Yes I am an investor in Docademic. I invested as soon as I saw their groundbreaking system. But I do not need their money. I invested to help Docademic. HitBTCs unethical tactics cost me and everyone money. Would you not be irate?
— John McAfee (@officialmcafee) June 30, 2018
Future historians will certainly look on in horror at how an obscure cryptocurrency exchange held back an app that lets you Skype with a doctor. In the meantime, alas, the tragedy continues.
5. The Unhackable Wallet
In the latest episode of this pointless drama, Uncle John took a break from replacing your doctor and president with a new product: a hardware wallet so advanced that the future president called it “Unhackable.”
You can probably guess what happened next.
Short update without going into too much detail about BitFi:
We have root access, a patched firmware and can confirm the BitFi wallet still connect happily to the dashboard.
There are NO checks in place to prevent that like claimed by BitFi.
— OverSoft (@OverSoftNL) August 1, 2018
To Bitfi’s credit, it doesn’t appear that the wallet was actually hacked, because there’s nothing to hack: the hardware doesn’t appear to be much more than a device for turning seeds into keys.
That might be defense enough, but Uncle John replied in typical McAfee fashion:
Then take the money from the wallet. Isn't that the issue? Can you get it or not? We don't even require that you access the wallet remotely. We'll send you the fucking thing with money on it. Can you get it or not? The answer is no! Who cares what other useless shit you can do.
— John McAfee (@officialmcafee) August 2, 2018
These are just the latest gems of McAfee wisdom; we haven’t even brushed the bottom of the crazy barrel. But as long as there’s more shit coming out of his mouth than going in, and as long as Bitcoin stays under six figures, the next two years should be a toothsome treat for all involved.
The author is invested in Bitcoin.
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