Fugitive John McAfee pushes privacy coins

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If you need any more proof that so called privacy coins, like Monero (XMR), are preferred by criminals, John McAfee just gave it to you. The exiled U.S. presidential candidate has returned to promoting dark coins on Twitter, and he’s pumping these coins at the future.

In between his tweets about U.S. politics and his party life in Cuba, McAfee took the time during SegWitCoin’s (BTC) recent spike in price to profess his love for dark coins, and specifically those that can’t be easily tracked:

The prices of many solid alt coins were hit ten times as bad as Bitcoin during the Bear market, yet many are based on sound economics, especially in the Medical field and in the Privacy coins which we all know will be the big winners. Privacy coins are the future.

— John McAfee (@officialmcafee) June 26, 2019

Perhaps because of the long crypto winter, or because of a souring relationship with the industry, it feels like it’s been a long time since McAfee specifically pushed cryptocurrency over Twitter. And to be clear, he didn’t do that with this recent push towards privacy coins, possibly because no project would be dumb enough to pay him to do so anymore.

His specific preference for privacy coins is easily explained. These dark coins, which advertise that they are harder to trace, argue that they provide a greater level of privacy for their users since their transactions are much harder to track down.

In reality, that makes them the preferred digital currency of one high profile group: criminals. Monero, the most popular privacy coin, has been the cryptocurrency of choice for many hackers.

Why would McAfee prefer a privacy coin? Well it makes a certain political sense, as he is a vocal libertarian who doesn’t want the government meddling in his affairs.

But he’s also a potential criminal, only currently residing in Cuba because he is evading law enforcement and the IRS because of “criminal acts against the U.S. Government,” or because he simply refuses to pay his taxes, depending who you ask. You can ask him though, he’s admitted to both things.

So who likes dark coins and privacy coins? Criminals. McAfee is literally a fugitive on the run, advocating for privacy coins, so it doesn’t get much clearer than that.

There’s a reason enterprise and institutional investment is going to move towards respectable digital currencies who are friendly to government and regulation, and shift away from the more criminal elements like McAfee’s suggestions. They want to build something for the long term, and that can only be done on platforms that are working with the system rather than against it.