John McAfee was found dead in his cell inside a Spanish prison. This is hours after the highest court of Spain approved his extradition to the United States on charges of tax evasion.
Aside from the McAfee antivirus, which was apparently named after him, McAffee is known as a divisive figure in the crypto space. Just like Elon Musk, McAfee was very loud during the last bull cycle of 2016 to 2017. He is the biggest, if not, one of the biggest influencers in the crypto space back then.
Just a single tweet of McAfee then could send a coin or token to the moon. Two of the examples are Verge, which in mid-December 2017, before his tweet was just below USD 0.01 and rose to over USD 0.28 within two weeks. Another example is Reddcoin from the beginning of January 2018.
McAfee launched his ' Coin of the Day' initiative back in December 2017. Crypto enthusiasts would often ensure they get notified of every tweet of McAfee to buy whatever coin or token he tweets about. His picks became pump-and-dump games in which those who benefits well are those who first bought his picks right after he tweeted. It was knows as 'the McAfee Effect.'
On the middle part of 2018, it was revealed that McAfee in return received from project developers and supporters a whopping USD 105,000 for every tweet or post he made. Most of the projects he tweeted or posted about are not existing anymore.
McAfee's death (suicide to be exact) reminded us that a company or an individual could exploit one's fame, reputation or power to market coins or tokens and artificially inflate their prices with pump-and-dumps. More than three years later, the crypto space has not yet learned its lesson. This bull cycle of 2021 to 2022, we got Elon Musk.
