The downfall of McAfee, the crypto maniac and father of antivirus software, after his suicide, his token soared 230%

On June 24, on the eve of being extradited back to the United States, encryption fanatic and antivirus software creator John McAfee committed suicide in a prison in Barcelona, ​​Spain.

In October 2020, John McAfee was arrested in Spain for alleged tax evasion and has been imprisoned ever since. Previously, the US government had been seeking to extradite him back to the country on charges including failure to file tax returns from 2014 to 2018, as well as suspected securities fraud and money laundering. On June 23, the Spanish National Court just approved the US government's extradition bill for John McAfee, and he will face up to 30 years in prison.

John McAfee is a crypto fanatic who publicly admitted on Twitter that he had not filed taxes for eight years and challenged the IRS to investigate his tax evasion. John is also known for his crazy price predictions. In 2017, he predicted that BTC would rise to $1 million by the end of 2020.

1 Denies Allegations, Tokens Rise 230% After Suicide

"The US thinks I hid my cryptocurrency, and I wish I did, but it's actually been dealt with by the McAfee team. My remaining assets have also been confiscated, my friends disappeared because of fear, and now I have nothing, but I have no regrets." This is a tweet posted by John McAfee and pinned last Wednesday.

Moreover, John McAfee also said in May this year: "Three years ago, I predicted that a war would break out between the government and cryptocurrency. The Federal Reserve now calls cryptocurrency a threat to economic stability, and China is also banning it. The war is still going on. I am the main target. Don't be afraid. Cryptocurrency is our last hope for financial independence. After countless lawsuits and the influence of the Federal Reserve, I have nothing now. But in prison, I feel unprecedented freedom. If you believe in what you have, you will really have it."

In October 2020, John McAfee was arrested in Spain, with Spanish authorities acting at the request of the U.S. Department of Justice, which at the time claimed that John had failed to pay taxes on millions of income earned between 2014 and 2018.

In addition, the Department of Justice also stated that John McAfee will be extradited back to the United States to face charges of tax evasion and intentional failure to report taxes. If convicted, he will face more than 5 years in prison. On the same day as the statement was released, the US SEC also sued John McAfee, claiming that he promoted ICOs without disclosing compensation, and was suspected of securities fraud, wire fraud and money laundering. He promoted seven ICOs in 2017 and 2018 and obtained more than $11.6 million worth of BTC and ETH, as well as $11.5 million worth of promotion tokens.

In response, John McAfee retorted that these accusations against him were absurd and that he was being used as a scapegoat for the United States' crackdown on cryptocurrencies, which was in fact an attack on all cryptocurrencies. The United States is spending their money in secret, which is contrary to the intent of the Constitution, so encrypted privacy currencies are the biggest defense developed to resist this corrupt system.

At the same time, Jimmy Gale Watson, executive advisor to John McAfee's cryptocurrency team, also pleaded not guilty to charges of involvement in two large-scale crypto scams. Jimmy was arrested in Texas on March 4. Manhattan federal prosecutor Audrey Strauss said in a statement that the two used social media to make a fortune through "lies and deception."

On June 24, Spanish newspaper El País reported that John McAfee committed suicide in a prison in Barcelona, ​​Spain. He was already dead when the prison guards found him, and medical professionals tried to revive him several times. The investigation is ongoing, but all signs point to suicide.

When John McAfee was 15 years old, his father also committed suicide. John McAfee was born in the UK, his mother is British and his father is American. When he was very young, he moved to Roanoke, Virginia, USA with his parents. His father later worked as a highway surveyor and often drank alcohol. After his father committed suicide, John said that he thought about that past every day when he woke up.

In May this year, John McAfee also said on Twitter that being in prison was the most difficult period of his life. He could not speak Catalan and Spanish, his interpersonal communication was limited, he had no entertainment, and no way to escape loneliness, emptiness and self. In addition, he was almost 76 years old and had been in prison for seven months without bail. For young people in their 40s or even 50s, this is not much, but for him, this may be a long part of the rest of his life.

But it is worth mentioning that the magic of the crypto market has reappeared. The token of Ghost, the project previously led by John McAfee, has seen a sharp rise today. Coingecko data shows that GHOST has risen 230% in 24 hours.

2 Crypto Maniacs Openly Challenge the IRS for Tax Evasion

Since entering the crypto space, John McAfee has been keen on commenting on industry current affairs and is the top KOL in the crypto space. In December 2017, when Bitcoin rose to $16,600 at the end of the last bull market, John McAfee tweeted that old-school people thought it was a bubble, but they just didn't understand blockchain. In this new paradigm, it is mathematically impossible for a bubble to appear. However, just over a month later, John McAfee's view was reversed. The crypto market took a sharp turn for the worse, the price of coins was bleak, and a bear market was coming.

In 2018, Bithemoth Exchange released a list of "Top 5 Cryptocurrency Celebrities". John McAfee topped the list for "his tweets are extremely influential and entertaining", and the other four were Satoshi Nakamoto, Vitalik, Zhao Changpeng, Roger Ver and other crypto tycoons.

But in the eyes of Ethereum co-founder Vitalik, John McAfee is considered crazy even in the community. However, John McAfee seems to have a good relationship with several others. During the computing power war at the end of 2018, John McAfee supported Wu Jihan and sent him an email saying, "We didn't talk much, but I saw you involved in the war, and I am still fighting on the battlefield. If you need help, I am always here to help." He also said that the arrogance and short-sightedness of Bitcoin developers triggered the war at that time. Developers should serve the community, not control the community.

In addition, in May 2019, Binance suffered a large-scale security breach. In that attack, hackers stole 7,000 bitcoins from Binance's hot wallet. John McAfee immediately tweeted to ask Zhao Changpeng if he needed security help, and said that he was still one of the most experienced cybersecurity experts. In the discussion with Roger Ver on blockchain and cryptocurrency, they also had extensive exchanges.

On the other hand, John McAfee also led Ghost, a privacy-focused decentralized ecological project that aims to help users ensure anonymity and privacy when conducting online transactions. Ghost is based on the POS consensus algorithm, supports master nodes, is powered by zero-knowledge proofs, and uses a hosting pool to shield and clear transaction history. At the same time, he also participated in several other projects, such as Clearpoll, Ethershift, Ethershare, etc.

In addition, in order to let more people see the possibility of blockchain technology and virtual currency changing the world, John McAfee joined Sina Weibo in August 2018. John also said before that encryption technology gave us the opportunity to control currency for the first time, but with this freedom comes the need to be responsible for ourselves. "If you are cheated, you can't blame the scammer, but yourself. If you can't do it, then you don't belong here."

But the craziest thing is that in 2019, John McAfee publicly admitted on Twitter that he had not filed a tax return for 8 years, and challenged the IRS to investigate his tax evasion. John McAfee also said that taxation is illegal, that he has paid tens of millions of dollars, and that he is no longer making money, with a negative net income, and that he lives mainly on the cash he earned from McAfee.

Moreover, John continues to challenge the "bottom line" of regulators. He has repeatedly argued with the US SEC, saying that crypto assets are not securities, the SEC has no regulatory power, and the SEC just anticipated the future and wanted to control it, so it would never support its approach. In addition, in an interview at the Malta Blockchain Summit, John McAfee said that he also intends to run for the US presidency in 2020 and use it as a channel to promote cryptocurrency. He said that his intention to run for president is not to win, but to obtain a large public platform to promote cryptocurrency into the public eye.

3 From the father of antivirus software to a fugitive

Before entering the encryption field, John McAfee once had a huge fortune. The software company he founded, McAfee, became the world's largest anti-virus company in the early 1990s, and John McAfee was also known as the "father of anti-virus software."

When John McAfee first arrived in the United States with his parents, his first job was selling magazines door-to-door, which earned him a small fortune. Later, John learned the basic knowledge of early computers in a company and used this knowledge to get a job at the Missouri Pacific Railroad. Here, John McAfee used the new computer system launched by IBM to help the company calibrate train schedules. But during this period, he began to get involved in drugs and often took psychedelic drugs to work.

In the 1970s, John McAfee moved to Silicon Valley and found many jobs at different technology companies, including NASA's Space Research Institute. In 1986, the first computer virus broke out on PCs, and John read about these new programs that infiltrated computers and decided to start his own company to fight back.

In 1987, John McAfee founded the antivirus software company McAfee and used what would prove to be a strategy to gain market share and establish industry dominance. Unlike his contemporaries who sold software for $50 to $100, John gave his software away for free and then charged for technical support and upgrades, a strategy that changed the software industry.

However, by 1994, John McAfee had grown tired of the company he founded and suddenly decided to step down as CEO and sell all his shares for $100 million, shocking the business world. In 2008, he officially retired, and in 2010, McAfee was acquired by Intel for $7.68 billion.

After leaving the company, John McAfee began a shopping spree. He bought a 5-acre beachfront mansion in Hawaii, a Cessna private jet that can accommodate 10 people, and invested $25 million to build a 280-acre estate in Colorado. He also bought millions of dollars worth of Lehman Brothers bonds.

But he was not a qualified investor. In 2008, Lehman Brothers declared bankruptcy and John's investment became worthless. He began to realize that he had almost no cash left, so he was forced to sell many assets. The Colorado estate worth $25 million was sold for only $5.7 million. The Hawaii mansion was also sold for only $1.5 million. When all these were disposed of, his net worth was reduced to $4 million.

In 2009, John McAfee moved to Belize, a Central American country, and founded a New Age Pharmaceutical Company there. But later, local police suspected that he was manufacturing methamphetamine and other drugs, so they arrested him and searched for drugs and arms. In November 2012, Belize authorities also announced that John McAfee was the main suspect in the murder of a foreign compatriot named Gregory Fore, who was one of his neighbors. In response, John said he was innocent and claimed that this was a complete set up by the Prime Minister and the police of Belize. He was a thorn in the side of the Belize authorities and they had been trying to shut him up.

Later, John McAfee fled to Guatemala. But during an interview, the photographer forgot to remove the location information of the photo from the metadata, and he was arrested by the Guatemalan police and deported back to the United States. Life in the United States was relatively free until January 2019, when John fled again after learning that he was about to be charged with tax evasion. In October 2020, he was arrested in Spain.

After learning about John McAfee, Zhao Changpeng said on Twitter that he was sad to hear the news and expressed condolences to his family. He will be missed forever. And the cryptocurrency he may still hold will also sleep forever with his departure.