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Why John McAfee thinks just one of his tweets is worth $105,000

McAfee says he will only promote coins he “truly believes in” and will limit promotional tweets to two a day.
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Controversial anti-virus pioneer John McAfee believes one tweet about cryptocurrencies from his Twitter account is worth $105,000.

That’s the claim made on a website promoting McAfee’s services to companies launching a new digital coin or planning an initial coin offering.

Using McAfee’s Twitter account is the smartest way for digital coins to spend their marketing budget, the website says, adding: “Within the cryptocurrency industry, nothing can match the power of a McAfee tweet” and “a single tweet has resulted in more than a million dollars of investment into an ICO.”

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McAfee says he will only promote coins he “truly believes in” and will limit promotional tweets to two a day.

McAfee Crypto Team, the company McAfee set up in February to hawk his promotional work on cryptocurrencies, says says 90 percent of companies looking to pay for promotional tweets are turned away.

McAfee has more than 800,000 Twitter followers, meaning the cost per potential investor is just $0.13. The website claims this is “orders of magnitude less than any other approach.”

ICOs or initial coin offerings are a new — and controversial — way of raising funds using tokens similar to bitcoin or ethereum, rather than issuing shares. However, many ICOs have proven to be scams, costing investors millions of dollars.

The eccentric cybersecurity engineer is a controversial figure within the technology industry. He travels with a permanent team of bodyguards fearful his movement is being tracked by a law enforcement agencies and governments.

He fled his home in Belize in 2013 as police sought him for questioning over the murder of his neighbor. He returned to the U.S. where he ran for president in 2016 as a member of the Libertarian Party.

An investigation by Motherboard in January suggested that McAfee’s tweets did have the ability to move the price of cryptocurrencies, correlating spikes in the price of certain coins to messages posted about them on his account.

Cover image: John McAfee participates in a fireside chat at the C2SV Technology Conference Day Three at McEnery Convention Center on September 28, 2013 in San Jose, California. (Tim Mosenfelder/Getty Images)