The creator of the well-known antivirus software, also famous for his extravagant opinions regarding the cryptocurrency world and the “McAfee effect” often brings up news hooks that seem pretty doubtful.
This time he decided to pick a bone with the HitBTC crypto exchange and attacked it last week.
McAfee hits HitBTC
The Hong-Kong-based company has over $270 mln trading volume per day. McAfee claimed on Twitter that it is time to fight crypto exchanges. He then referred to HitBTC, saying that millions of users have a too low income to afford a minimum buy-in amount.
The crypto exchanges have become the thing that we have originally fought against. Their power is immense. Hitbtc, for example, has increased suffering for millions of poor people who cannot afford the minimum buy-in since it is greater than their monthly income. Boycott them.
— John McAfee (@officialmcafee) 28 июня 2018 г.
It is likely that what McAfee had in mind was the high withdrawal fees implemented by HitBTC, although he was being very unclear in his tweets regarding the exact reason for this attack against the platform.
Nevertheless, later McAfee specified that the exchange had an issue with the Docademic currency and that it was exactly that caused the aforementioned deaths.
I am asked if I exaggerated in saying .@hitbtc is liable for the death of untold people. CEO of Docademic asked Hitbtc to change their policies to benefit the poor, but it fell on deaf ears. If your not a scam call me. I am brave enough to list my number: 731 608 8837
— John McAfee (@officialmcafee) 2 июля 2018 г.
I have sent eleven empassioned letters to .@hitbtc and recieved only one response. Is it our fault? CEO of Docademic, Mr. Charles Nader warned the CEO of Hitbtc three months prior to these unecessary deaths. You tell me sir, who is responsible?
— John McAfee (@officialmcafee) 2 июля 2018 г.
HitBTC strikes back
The exchange, it seems, kept watching McAfee attacking it in Twitter and then posted a response, in which the exchange expressed gratitude to the man for taking the issue to the new stage and publicly explained its rules on funds withdrawing.
Thank you very much @officialmcafee for being the voice of the crypto community and raising this important problem. pic.twitter.com/IgyeZShF2S
— HitBTC (@hitbtc) 1 июля 2018 г.
Is McAfee back at advertising coins?
Before the US Security and Exchange Commission (SEC) put pressure on McAfee, he used to promote ICO coins in his Twitter account (for which he, some say, charged around $100,000). Some of those ICOs were pretty dubious.
The current issue around Docademic coin may well be a hidden promotional campaign for this token, similarly to the situation when ICO adverts were prohibited by Google, online magazines began to write prepaid articles telling everyone about some new coin ICO coming soon, without advertising it directly.
It is not clear, though, whether Docademic has paid anything to McAfee for doing it but he once mentioned on Twitter that he had invested in this coin.
Dan Burgin
Alex Dovbnya