‘Never before seen’ footage of John McAfee on the run goes unsold
It’s been about a week since the untimely death of rampant libertarian John McAfee and the internet rumor mill continues to whirl.
But strangely, there’s no interest in an NFT bundled with troves of “never before seen footage” documenting McAfee’s life on the run.
Conspiracy theories of McAfee’s end abound. Mostly, they focus on a purported dead man’s switch that would trigger release of sensitive info on powerful people.
McAfee’s dead man’s switch would go off after he missed his weekly Twitter post, they said.
Or, a now-deleted Instagram post of the letter ‘Q’ — perhaps loaded with a cryptographic message pointing to an Ethereum address — would set it off.
There was also a link to a now-vanished webpage supposedly suggesting the data dump from beyond the grave.
Some conspiracists concluded those docs will implicate numerous law enforcement agencies with terabytes of evidence.
Others assume McAfee is exacting one final troll for the lulz.
McAfee footage shot by Ghost co-founder
All this while over 50 gigabytes of video detailing McAfee’s experience as an international fugitive have been on auction for months via NFT marketplace Rarible without any bids.
The account selling the footage says they’re the co-founder of Ghost, McAfee’s short-lived, privacy-centric digital ecosystem he abandoned just months after launching it.
[Read more: FBI ties and Ponzi games — here’s what SafeMoon doesn’t want you to know]
“This never before seen footage was shot in 2019 aboard John McAfees yacht [sic],” says the account. “Buyers of the auctions email […] to arrange physical delivery of the items.”
- @JohnMcAfeeCollection listed the NFT/videos for 500 ETH ($1.07 million) on March 23.
- A few hours later, that price halved to 250 ETH ($539,000).
- The price then dropped to 150 ETH ($325,000) the day after McAfee’s passing.
So, the secretive footage is worth roughly $6,500 per gigabyte.
The preview video harkens to a time before he sat inside a Spanish jail facing US extradition.
McAfee wears a clean blue t-shirt, his usual sunglasses, and what appears to be food dangling from his mustache.
“You know I’m running for president,” he says into a phone in front of his face, referring to his failed 2020 campaign.
“I have no intention of winning because it’s not possible, not in this two-party system. It cannot be done.”
Second NFT comes with authentic mask
The same account is also selling a second NFT linked to five other “never before seen” videos and a funky mask of McAfee’s face.
“This mask was given to me while on John McAfees Yacht [sic], while he was on the run in the Bahamas in 2019,” reads the NFT’s description.
And just like the first, its price halved the day after McAfee’s death — now 50 ETH ($108,000) down from 100 ETH ($216,000).
[Read more: What happened to the Lifeboat Foundation’s Bitcoin Endowment Fund?]
The mask NFT has so far garnered only one joke bid: 0.001 ETH ($2.15) on April 1.
In any case, it’s certainly odd the internet has shown such thirst for unravelling the mystery of McAfee’s final years, but has so far ignored these curious NFTs.