Crypto Evangelist John McAfee is No More

Crypto advocate and techie John McAfee was found dead in his jail cell at the Brians 2 Penitentiary Center on Wednesday, as per a report from the Spanish international news agency EFE. McAfee Associates, who was born in 1945, established his first software business McAfee in his early forties.

At that time, his firm was famous for one of the most well-known antivirus software products. In 1994, he quit the firm and went on to create software company Tribal Voice, which was responsible for one of the internet’s earliest instant messaging and chat systems, and also technology company QuorumEx and security and privacy firm Future Tense Central.

McAfee gained notoriety in the crypto community and the news media in July 2017 when he predicted that Bitcoin (BTC) will touch $500,000 by 2020. In November 2017, when the crypto asset’s price was looking much more positive, McAfee upped the ante, predicting that BTC will hit $1 million by 2021.

Neither forecast turned out to be true, nor did he follow through on his lavish wager, in which he promised to “eat [his] dick on national television” if the price didn’t reach $500,000. Nevertheless, in the Rarible marketplace, a nonfungible token (NFT) cartoon playfully depicting the 75-year-old honoring his pledge is offered for sale.

McAfee’s extradition has been sought by the US government on allegations of failing to file tax records from 2014 to 2018 and purportedly not disclosing revenue connected to cryptocurrency ventures and consultancy services.

Officials detained McAfee at Barcelona’s international airport in October 2020, holding him until a deportation judgment could be made. McAfee routinely updated his Twitter account, originally stating that he was “happy” with his predicament and that he had colleagues in jail, as well as documenting his imprisonment circumstances. Under one of his last texts, he stated that he had lost all of his cryptocurrency assets as well as several of his pals.

After permission from the country’s Council of Ministers and the chance for McAfee’s team of lawyers to challenge the verdict, a Spanish court decided that McAfee might have been deported to the United States. The 75-year-old initially indicated that the allegations against him were politically driven and that he would have served the remaining years in jail if he had been deported.