We’ve all seen or heard about John McAfee’s tweets.
Whether it be his now infamous ‘Coin of the Day’, his apparent involvement as a leading light of crypto, or the long, rambling, pseudo-apocalyptic tweets proclaiming a new world order or some other such silliness, Mr John McAfee is, with his 825,000 followers on Twitter, undoubtedly one of the most visible figures in the cryptocurrency space.
Is this a good thing?
Personally, no. I don’t think it is.
This isn’t based on jealousy of his money, or any Victorian-era revulsion at his penchant for paying for drugs prostitutes using Bitcoin. I couldn’t care less if he spent his weekends sticking his private key codes up his derriere whilst a K-Pop band purchased with Ripple take turns to spank him with giant foam hands.
The problem is that is, that if he were doing that every weekend then nobody would be surprised. This is the man who proclaimed about a week ago that he was on the run from the SEC and who famously moved to Belize to ‘escape the US Government’, before allegedly murdering his neighbour (I have no idea if he actually did, I’m just saying) and having to run away.
The point I’m making is that the man has little credibility in sensible circles, and yet he is one of the most visible faces of cryptocurrency.
How is cryptocurrency supposed to go mainstream and lead to mass-adoption when one of the scene’s godfather’s rants and raves like a tin-hat wearing, doomsday-preparing owner of a ranch in Montana – who just happens to think that he is being hunted by cartels and his wife is also in on it.
There is little problem with the hippie crowd, or the tech crowd, but what about tradesmen, and salesmen, and those who work in healthcare? These are sensible people, who trust banks because they are deemed to be respectable and safe. Can you imagine the CEO of Barclays of Bank of America tweeting about how he was tripping balls on acid he bought using a Bank of America cheque?
No, me either.
If mass-adoption of crypto is to become a reality then it really does need to clean up its act, and if John McAfee truly cared about crypto then he would to0.