Eccentric cybersecurity entrepreneur John McAfee has claimed his famous $1 million bitcoin price prediction was a “ruse” to onboard new users into the cryptocurrency space, and said he believes BTC isn’t the future of crypto.
On Twitter, McAfee addressed his $1 million by the end of 2020 bitcoin price prediction, which he defended numerous times since originally making it back in November 2017, saying it was a “ruse” to onboard new users that “worked.”
He added that while bitcoin was the first cryptocurrency it’s now “ancient technology,” competing it to the Ford Motel T in the automobile world. Per his words, newer blockchains have privacy, smart contracts, and other features BTC doesn’t have.
Eat my dick in 12 months?
A ruse to onboard new users. It worked.
Bitcoin was first. It's an ancient technology. All know it.
Newer blockchains have privacy, smart contracts, distributed apps and more.
Bitcoin is our future?
Was the Model T the future of the automobile?
— John McAfee (@officialmcafee) January 5, 2020
Notably, McAfee’s original price prediction was for BTC to hit $500,000 per coin by the end of this year, but in November 2017 doubled it saying it “accelerated much faster than my model assumptions.”
According to websites tracking McAfee’s prediction, he is currently down by over 95%, as the price of the flagship cryptocurrency would have to rise $178,000 to be on target for $1 million by the end of this year.
The price of the cryptocurrency would have to rise over $2,800 a day to reach the target, but in BTC’s short history there have been precedents of such exponential surges. Between January and June 2011, BTC went from $0.3 to $32, and between October 2012 and December 2013 its price rose from little over $10 to over $1,000.
McAfee claimed his “ruse” resulted in “onboarding 10,000 new users to crypto,” and added he doesn’t care about the price of BTC as it’s “irrelevant” to the cryptocurrency space. He argued bitcoin isn’t the future of crypto.
You asked if I hate Bitcoin now.
Of course not.
But Bitcoin is not the future of crypto. You have all always known that.
You just wanted to ride a wave.
Crypto is the key to unlocking our prisons.
You've been using that key to scratch your asses.
Wake up.
— John McAfee (@officialmcafee) January 7, 2020
When asked which privacy-centric cryptocurrencies he’d support, McAfee pointed towards monero (XMR). It’s worth noting that in May 2018, as CryptoGlobe reported, the eccentric entrepreneur argued Bitcoin Private (BTCP) was going to “replace monero” on the dark web.
BTCP, according to CryptoCompare data, is down 99.7% against BTC since its launch, and currently only has a $400 daily trading volume on the Graviex cryptocurrency exchange.
Featured image via Unsplash.
