After many years of having lived in different locations, having changed occupations and cities, I am currently back at the apartment I've grown up in. Often, I am having flashbacks of both good and bad times from my childhood and teen years.

I still remember myself as a little kid, should have been like 7 or 8 years old, sitting in front of my first computer.

While in my childhood other kids were buying Nintendo consoles, I asked my parents for a PC. I knew the specs I wanted since I was already reading computer-related magazines and fell in love with computer technology from a very young age.

McAfee was a name I learned very early. His antivirus software helped me and my data and saved me from countless hours of trouble.

John McAfee was one of the three names in the technology sector that I idolized at this very young age.

A Pioneer Businessman and Developer

John McAfee was a pioneer, a tech-savvy person, and an entrepreneur. He was a very creative person, a free spirit, and also wild and restless.

In his 70s he was running for president, accusing the US government and the enforcing agencies of their wrongdoing, living a lavish lifestyle, and evading taxes.

He became an advocate for Bitcoin and Crypto and in 2017 he gained notoriety for his cryptocurrency promotional methods.

He was also fighting drug addiction, accused of murdering his neighbor in Belize, fled back to the US to avoid arrest, and a few years later became a meme in the online world with his "Coin of the Day" pump and dump scheme.

He never lost his interest in data security and privacy.

John McAfee was an easy personality to chat and have a drink with, and on Twitter, he was displaying his excellent PR skills.

He was replying to every comment, always being polite and winning everyone that ever discussed with him.

But McAfee was also so controversial that nobody could trust him completely. When he was arrested in Spain, it was just him having to face this burden, no previous friends were there to support him, and only a few Tweets were sparsely written on social media. News had completely forgotten about John, and just a few people from those around him actually cared.

His wife Janice posted a tweet a few days ago, on Father's Day, one prophetic Tweet:

Was this punishment enough? 

Leaving a 75-year-old person with medical conditions inside a prison cell in a foreign land for 8 months to rot?

Was this about tax evasion or perhaps there was more? John McAfee once threatened to expose evidence of what he claimed was corrupted agents and officials.

Bluff or not this certainly should have raised questions. Comment below this tweet is probably the answer we seek:

My First Virus - McAfee to the Rescue!

Back in 199x (must have been 1993, not so sure though), I was in front of my new PC, still trying to figure out how DOS was working.

"Bad command or file name"

This error message hunted me for years until I managed to switch to a better system running on Windows 98. I hated this error, it was my nightmare!

Days passed and I had managed to learn DOS. At least the basic commands such as DIR, COPY, DELETE, CD, etc.

A friend of mine gave me a game that was about 5-6 diskettes. It was a pirated copy of Space Quest V. I installed it, played a bit, and a couple of hours later, my computer started behaving erratically.

I wasn't able to run anything, no application was running and I was receiving some errors I've never seen before.

That was my first virus encounter. I don't remember the name of this DOS virus but I remember vividly calling a cousin of mine that had computer knowledge and visiting me later that day.

He booted DOS with a floppy disk and run the McAfee antivirus to scan and clean my computer.

And there it was McAfee's Antivirus found the virus and removed it! Everything went back to normal after that. My cousin scolded me for using pirated software and since then I have changed my ways. Of course, later, I used P2P torrent networks for years but never stopped spending a certain budget on the entertainment sector (games, movies, music, etc.).

John McAfee with his software saved me many times during my early PC days.

It is one of the reasons I remember McAfee with an appreciation for what he produced.

I was a kid anyway, but all I remember was holding names like John McAfee, Peter Norton, and Bill Gates pretty high in my mind. Not just for the wealth they amassed but for the technological progress they represented.

These were the pioneers from my time. Now, these names are changed to Musk and Bezos and youth is learning about those, but is their work of the same magnitude as their predecessors?

How To Uninstall McAfee Antivirus

Image from: Source

The next time I've heard of John was many years later after one of his YouTube video's went viral, in 2013.

In this video, John was trying to convince everyone to uninstall McAfee antivirus, and the video also featured lots of drugs and partying with the ladies.

John McAfee was an eccentric businessman that achieved everything, lost almost everything during the 2008 collapse of the economy, and then managed to recover from this financial calamity.

It takes heroic strength to reach the top, crash to the bottom and then recover and reach the top again. You got to give him at least that.

McAfee later was attracted by Bitcoin and decided to become an advocate for cryptocurrencies.

One day he shilled Verge (XVG) which was one coin that got him interested because of its privacy features. Verge, though, had weaknesses and later was 51% attacked multiple times.

McAfee is accused of receiving payments from crypto projects to include them in the "Coin of The Day" Tweets he was producing. I don't know the evidence the authorities have against him, but this was implied by many.

It became a joke since these coins were immediately pumping and dumping after just a couple of minutes.

To McAfee's defense, the whole market is a huge pump and dump.

If we accuse just one person then we excuse the whale manipulation and the exchanges. The fake volumes, inside tipping, spoof orders, tether, and everything else is like they don't exist. But our only problem with this unregulated market was John McAfee and his Tweets. What about the DogeFather?

The problem of the US government was not the pump and dumps!

The government did not care for anyone having lost money due to a McAfee coin of the day tweet. There was nobody ever formally accused McAfee of running a social media pump and dump scheme.

Everyone knew exactly what was going on and what was at stake if they were to invest because of a McAfee tweet. 

It was a hilarious time for Crypto. Probably most haven't lived this time, so I'm going to give you a small summary:

The "Coin of the Day" Days:

Every day, thousands on Twitter were waiting for McAfee to post the new "Coin of the Day" featured cryptocurrency. 

There was speculation on which coin he will decide to announce and huge anticipation. Everyone was in a great mood.

Those that accuse him have not lived these moments or stayed behind. Chat rooms were filled with comments of anticipation. Comments on social media were asking if he is still sleeping, others were explaining John's schedule and how he had to take breakfast first, and there were so many hilarious moments.

Nobody would ever take this seriously and invest in any of these tweets as a serious investment.

Everybody was just being part of the crypto frenzy moments and were waiting to see if they could buy soon enough right at the announcement and get out sooner than everyone else before the mass dump.

You knew the risk you were undertaking, so nobody ever complained. Was this illegal, hell yes. Did the government even bother? 

No! The government just wanted the tax money from everyone involved.

Everyone that was accusing McAfee of being a scammer, for this reason, has missed one of the top internet memes and lulz moments.

Those who accuse McAfee are also doing it for their personal interests.

Since more often John McAfee was telling truths that for some were difficult to counter.

2020 Charges

According to the charges McAfee had made millions between 2014-2018 and failed to file tax returns. The main part of the indictment was about his cryptocurrency pump and dump scheme, which explains how McAfee was using his influence on Twitter to aggressively advertise cryptocurrencies and profit by selling them at a very higher price. (Source).

The problem was that McAfee didn't pay taxes to the US government and was accused of trying to liquidate crypto assets by using accounts of associates.

Do you see the hypocrisy? 

Pump and dumps are illegal but there is one problem. John McAfee profited from something which so many are doing on Twitter and YouTube. He wasn't accused of abusing his Twitter influence but for failing to report tax returns.

McAfee was having more than a million followers since probably when Twitter started. He was different from the rest, he didn't care who he was replying to, and wasn't avoiding any question. He was just replying to everybody.

His influence reached its peak around December 2018.

He shilled coins like Verge, Tron, Digibyte. Nobody followed McAfee's financial advice to invest in the long run. Everyone was just looking for short-term speculation and a quick get in and out.

It was so quick that each pump was only lasting a few minutes. Getting in at the first minute and out three or four minutes later would produce a profit from this pump.

He was also advocating for some very dubious projects that had blight chances to succeed, such as ReddCoin.

Nothing of what Mcafee said was true in this Tweet. But nobody cared, if he just wrote ReddCoin, it would still pump this altcoin to the moon.

Nobody was going to read the reasons McAfee shilled a coin either, since everyone just wanted to be part of the pump and dump and get out with a profit before the rest.

McAfee hit rock bottom with this scheme and he lost any credibility he still had. He later tried to create a cryptocurrency wallet that was found to be lacking in security, a few DEXs like McAfeeDEX that also failed, and tried to run for President for the second time in 2020.

But this was John McAfee. Always controversial and always having his own rules and taking huge risks.

A kind person that was always fun to listen to, but also someone that many thinks he couldn't be trusted. Was this required for Crypto though? Are banks to be trusted and does anyone trust their private keys with someone else? Do you have your own volition and will or do you follow what celebrities are telling you?

John's attitude made a good point. Trust will not be a requirement in the future financial world. Cryptocurrency systems are trustless, the code is public transactions are validated on the blockchain. Trusting a person and risking a lot that he/she will perform the tasks you paid for, is not going to be the standard in the future.

McAfee thrived in marketing and knew that his actions wouldn't affect the cryptocurrency market negatively. In 2017 it was all a big joke anyway.

We had Bitconnect back then, once again the scaling debate that reignited after BTC reached $20 in fees, the rise of shitcoins and scams, ICOs, exchange hacks, a random Japanese guy from MtGox threatening to dump the 200k BTC, and so many more ridiculous incidents.

It was always fun though, no matter what happened. Songs appeared, crypto rappers. Even the scammers were funnier and understood this market better than those we have today.

John McAfee was part of what was the best entertainment value someone could get from the internet in 2017. Those that lived the previous bull ran, even at the final stages, are probably remembering how much fun we had.

When buying the top of a huge pump initiated by McAfee, was perhaps our fault and instead of blaming McAfee for doing what every YouTuber or Twitter influencer is doing for years, we should be looking at our choices.

The Arrest in Spain Was the Beginning of the End

John McAfee was arrested in Spain in October 2020. He was arrested by the Spanish authorities after the US had him charged him with tax evasion.

Seven months later the extradition request by the US authorities was granted by the Spanish justice system and McAfee was to be extradited to the US.

The same day with the Spanish court decision (June 23th, 2021) , McAfee died inside his prison cell in Barcelona.

It seems this is the most serious crime someone can commit, and although I am not advocating against paying taxes, I seriously don't understand how much of an offense it was for a person to be treated like that.

He was left to rot in a Spanish prison cell, alone, a stranger in a strange land.

Hunted down by the US government for tax evasion and a few hours after the Spanish court decided his extradition, he reportedly took his own life inside his prison cell.

The official Spanish report is suicide by hanging. A very sad situation that should also be examined further as there are many questions from the first minute we learned about this news.

John McAfee was no monster to deserve this harsh treatment.

Without the option of a fair trial at Belize, anyone would flee this country in case he was being investigated for an act he didn't commit. Very few know exactly what happened there and all those that provide this event as a fact (the killing of McAfee's neighbor) are not thinking about it straight.

Odds suggest that McAfee was about to be framed for this murder and since he was a very intelligent person he knew there wasn't going to be a getaway if he was to be arrested in Belize. Many will probably disagree, but I would suggest reading the whole story again first. Sometimes we remember situations as they were presented to us and not as they happened.

Final Thoughts

McAfee was a libertarian, but his personality was overshadowing political parties. It wouldn't matter in any way if he was a republican or leaning towards any other political ideology.

The part that McAfee died without leaving a final note, is something that doesn't suit his character either.

McAfee would have left this world with a speech blasting government, feds, censorship, and everything that he thought was wrong with the world.

This is John McAfee, a freedom fighter that was open to everyone and telling many truths about subjects we are all afraid to discuss.

There is speculation, and we should be following this story carefully since there are already too many details missing from the announcement of the Spanish authorities.

How can we be certain that this man really took his own life, a la Epstein, after everything we already know about him?

Writing on the following platforms:

● ReadCash ● NoiseCash  ● Medium ● Hive ● Steemit   ●Vocal ● Minds

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• Lead Image from: Wired

• Rest images are screenshots from Twitter