Tax 'Fugitive' and Crypto Bull John McAfee Announces New Privacy Coin

Famed computer programmer, eccentric and cryptocurrency advocate John McAfee has announced that he is working on a privacy coin called Ghost.

On April 11, McAfee tweeted that Ghost will be underpinned by a Proof-of-Stake algorithm, and will be tradable against leading cryptocurrencies via atomic swaps on the McAfeeDex decentralized exchange.

“With a DEX/privacy coin combo we now have full control of our finances!” he said.

Ghost privacy coin comprises McAfee’s latest crypto stunt

McAfee, who claims he is wanted in the United States for tax evasion, has been a long-time advocate of cryptocurrency and a figure of controversy within the industry.

In 2018, John McAfee began to openly accept sums of $105,000 in exchange for tweets promoting cryptocurrencies — claiming to have been receiving the fees for over six months at the time. 

He also cited an ad-hoc study conducted by Vice which found that his promotional tweets drove short-term price gains of between 50% and 350%.

In August 2019, McAfee was embroiled in an obscure dispute with South China Zombie Research Centre (SCZRC), the developers behind Zombie Coin — a gimmicky initial coin offering that paid McAfee $4.5 million to draft its whitepaper and promote its ICO. 

After paying McAfee upfront, he u-turned on the project and declared it to be a "shitcoin," prompting the SCZRC to threaten him with a $100 million lawsuit.

McAfee launches Jeffrey Epstein-themed ERC-20

The last crypto-asset launched by Mcafee was an ERC-20 token dubbed "Epstein Did Not Kill Himself" under the ticker WHACKD.

The token appears to be exclusively trading on McAfee’s decentralized exchange, however, it has next to zero liquidity — with the current order spread ranging from 3 satoshis on the buy-side and 12 satoshis on the sell-side. 

Just two transactions appear to have been processed by the WHACKD network in the past 24 hours.