Software tycoon turned cryptocurrency enthusiast John McAfee recently revealed that he charges $105,000 for each tweet he sends out promoting digital coins or initial coin offerings (ICO). Last week, McAfee tweeted that his team had written up a guide on how his promotional tweets worked, and posted it to McAfee Crypto Team, an organization McAfee and his team put together to promote ICOs.
“It’s self-aggrandizing and ego-stroking for us,” he wrote, “However, if you’re planning an ICO, trying to boost a coin, or want to shine a light on your latest project, you should overlook our swollen egos and see.” The link details how each tweet costs $105,000 but divided between his 810,000 followers, the cost per ‘investor’ is only $0.13. The site boldly declares, “John McAfee’s tweets are by far the most influential in the field of cryptocurrency.”
Extrapolating from a Twitter poll conducted by McAfee himself, McAfee Crypto Team claims, among other statistics, that 259,000 of McAfee’s Twitter followers “have more than 50% of their total assets in cryptocurrencies,” and that 224,000 of his followers represent, “at a minimum, $4.48 billion in crypto investment.” The site claims that the numbers are arrived at through “statistically valid percentages.”
McAfee’s tweets can indeed sway cryptocurrency markets. In January, Motherboard tracked McAfee’s tweets about alternate cryptocurrencies to their market performance over the course of three weeks. The site found a correlation between McAfee’s tweets about cryptocurrencies and spikes in their valuation — in the case of Burst coin, a jump of 350
At the time, Motherboard speculated that McAfee was taking part in pump and dump schemes to boost the value of coins he was already invested in. That may still be the case, but the McAfee Crypto Team post suggests McAfee also has a completely separate racket: hawking endorsements for cash.
A member of Burstcoin’s development team, Tom Créance, responded to a request to comment that its team “simply does not have the financial capabilities to pay Mr. McAfee to promote the coin. The core team did not pay him, and we were just as surprised as everyone else when we saw his tweet. It goes strictly against our beliefs in long term and sustainable strategies.”