In brief

  • John McAfee has abandoned the Ghost cryptocurrency project.
  • McAfee once touted Ghost as the "future" of privacy online.
  • Disagreements with Ghost developers, however, appear to have caused the cybersecurity mogul to call it quits.

John McAfee, the wacky, drug-fused cybersecurity mogul, has dropped out of the $GHOST privacy coin project, which would have powered his privacy-first crypto ecosystem, Ghost.

“I am abandoning the $Ghost project. Management is incapable of making a success of the project. It will, without a doubt fail,” he tweeted yesterday.

Ghost was to be an unstoppable, “privacy-first and decentralized” network, promising its users to make them “ghosts” when making transactions. Just a week earlier, McAfee, who is currently on the run from US tax authorities, had pumped up $GHOST, the proof-of-stake privacy coin that powers the network. “The world is full of FUD. Believe none of it. $GHOST is the future,” he tweeted.

But no longer. “I tried to explain the fundamental principles of management, but they fell on deaf ears. My apologies to those that I led astray. Sorry.” 

Since McAfee pronounced the coin dead, $GHOST has collapsed in value. The coin’s price fell by over 50%, from $0.7 to $0.27, after McAfee’s tweets.

Development on the coin is still ongoing and its ambitions are unchanged, according to a statement by the $GHOST development team yesterday.

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The team, who could not immediately be reached for comment, pointed out that $GHOST is a decentralized, open-source project. “GHOST is much bigger than 1 person, even if you are John fucking McAfee,” they said in the statement.

The team said that McAfee was “in no way involved in any day to day operations, nor has he ever been involved with any of the tech or building of GHOST.” 

They did not explain why he left the project, but called him “a loose cannon.” McAfee responded, “If I am a loose cannon because I dropped my support for a failing project so be it. I will not support bullshit.”

The team behind $GHOST said they will continue work on the project and drop the “by John McAfee” tagline (a day later, this is yet to happen). 

McAfee said that he will replace the $GHOST privacy coin with another one, and that he plans to push his Ghost Phone Service live on September 30. It promises to let people use phone services with utmost privacy. 

Prior to tweeting about $GHOST, McAfee posted a video in which he explained that the path to success required “getting over shit immediately.” After tweeting about $GHOST, McAfee posted a video of a woman ejaculating out of a moving car.

He has clearly moved on. 

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