I bet some of you saw this coming. The cybersecurity eccentric mogul John McAfee who pioneered cybersecurity, or at least caused its rise in popularity through McAfee antiviruses and security systems has been on the headlines for quite some time now.
Recently, he has been indicted for fraud and misleading people through Twitter. The federal prosecutors claim McAfee used his Twitter account which has thousands of followers to promote obscure cryptocurrencies. He would purchase the said currencies and promote them to make a healthy profit off of the promotion.
McAfee is already currently on a run. Last October, he was arrested by the Securities and Exchange Commission for a similar civil suit. He also fled the country, some time back, when he was deemed as a person of interest for a case related to his neighbor. He claimed he was scared for his own life. McAfee has also been involved with many other tax frauds and financial violations.
Albeit he has sold off and mover over from McAfee antivirus and security, he is still in cybersecurity business. He also is quite the active crypto shiller on twitter. For one, I bought XMR (monero) due to his consistent shilling of it. Upon further research, I found older tweets shilling BTC, followed by degrading BTC and shilling other coins. And a similar pattern always followed.
I was never bothered by it. My XMR purchase has been a profitable one, and it was my gateway to diversifying, my then, btc maximized portfolio.
It is important to note that shilling or promoting any currency, cryptocurrency or asset isn't illegal, in general. However, McAfee decided to raise his investments by falsely claiming no stake in his recommendation. These actions maybe a violation of federal fraud statutes, as per the feds.
It is important to note that two things are taken into account regarding McAfee's shilling by the feds, one where he promoted coins for his own profit after making the purchase. Second, he offered to promote ICOs and new cryptocurrencies for a cut.
That is the violation. According to the feds, he had to disclose his financial stake endorsed with the cryptocurrency he was being commissioned by to promote.
It will be rather interesting to see how this all rolls out. McAfee has clearly declined there is any violation and claimed that the SEC, if went along with this, would have to do the same with many tokens, related and unrelated to McAfee.
For one, I am not aware of these regulations so I have no speak on them. But, McAfee's tweets do carry a lot of value in the market. Much like Elon's one-word tweet or marijuana puffing stunt on his stocks. McAfee does shill a lot of shitcoins( that's a personal opinion). There also seems to be evidence of his shills being tweeted out after his purchase, and also evidence of him doing it because he was getting a cut of it, even if he denies it.
I am more interested in how this affects shillers like you and me.
