Hack me if you can: McAfee issues $100,000 dare to anyone who can hack ‘unhackable’ wallet

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McAfee is taking another ‘bullshit walk.’ This time, to help a start-up called Bitfi sell some wallets.

John McAfee is at it with the shilling party again. Yesterday, he tweeted about a cryptocurrency wallet start-up called Bitfi, daring the Twitterverse to hack the supposedly “unhackable” wallets.

“For all you naysayers who claim that “nothing is unhackable” & who don’t believe that my Bitfi wallet is truly the world’s first unhackable device, a $100,000 bounty goes to anyone who can hack it. Money talks, bullshit walks. Details on http://Bitfi.com,” he tweeted.

For all you naysayers who claim that “nothing is unhackable” & who don’t believe that my Bitfi wallet is truly the world’s first unhackable device, a $100,000 bounty goes to anyone who can hack it. Money talks, bullshit walks. Details on https://t.co/ATFaxwUzQC

— John McAfee (@officialmcafee) July 24, 2018

Such a claim is reminiscent of yet another start-up called SmartBillions, who dared the entire Internet to try and hack their also “unhackable” smart contract which contained all 1,500 ETH of their funds. And then they got hacked. The “winners” got away with 400 ETH before SmartBillions backed out of their own dare and pulled out the rest of their fund.

To wash themselves clean of any suspicions that this is a white hat hack bounty (which would have been far more dignified), Bitfi clarifies that this is a demonstration to anyone who has any doubts.

“This bounty program is not intended to help Bitfi to identify security vulnerabilities since we already claim that our security is absolute and that the wallet cannot be hacked or penetrated by outside attacks,” they wrote. “Rather this program is intended to demonstrate to anyone who claims or believes that “nothing is unhackable” or that they can hack into the Bitfi wallet, that such attempts are futile and that the advertised claims about the Bitfi wallet are accurate.”

But this is obviously a marketing trick, as expected from a professional shill who once blatantly marketed his shilling services for $105,000 until the SEC shut it down. Because before anyone can give it a go, they’d have to purchase a Bitfi wallet for $120, and then load it up with $50. If he were really that confident, it’d be a free-for-all on Github.

https://twitter.com/TinehAgent/status/1021836727562846208

But the fact is that the $100,000 “prize” is probably what they assume this particular stunt would rake in. If they make at least this much, they wouldn’t have to fork any money should things go down.

As it seems, some are willing to pitch in to the pot money. Regardless of whether Bitfi turns out to be truly “unhackable,” this kind of marketing stunt in the cryptocurrency industry is ironically the ultimately fitting definition for “bullshit walks.” As in: “let me take a short ‘bullshit walk’ and we’ll be swimming in ICO money in no time.” At least, now we have a new term to coin. #bullshitwalks