Did John McAfee Put a Dead Man’s Switch on Ethereum?

Rogue tech entrepreneur John McAfee was reported lifeless after committing suicide in his Spanish jail cell yesterday. Now, rumors of a blockchain-based “lifeless man’s swap” have emerged.

Did McAfee Put up a Crypto Key on Instagram?

Shortly after McAfee’s demise was reported, a picture with the letter “Q” was posted to McAfee’s Instagram account. Later, McAfee’s complete account, together with the publish, was deleted.

The letter “Q” was seemingly a reference to the conspiracy group QAnon. That led some to imagine that McAfee’s demise had triggered a system that might leak secret authorities data.

Those that have been in a position to entry the picture claimed that the picture contained an Ethereum handle key. Nevertheless, these claims have been incorrect. The string started with FBMD, indicating that the textual content was Fb metadata, as is commonplace throughout the positioning.

Although some have advised that the metadata contained a blockchain key in hexadecimal code, there doesn’t appear to be any significant information within the string when it’s transformed from hex code.

Did McAfee Use Ethereum?

Others have drawn consideration to latest exercise regarding McAfee’s WHACKD token on the Ethereum blockchain.

McAfee launched the WHACKD token in November 2019. At the moment, he expressed the idea that he can be killed by authorities brokers below the guise of suicide, just like conspiracy theories that emerged across the demise of Jeffrey Epstein in 2019.

Getting delicate messages from U.S. officers saying, in impact: “We’re coming for you McAfee! We’ll kill your self”. I acquired a tattoo in the present day simply in case. If I suicide myself, I did not. I used to be whackd. Examine my proper arm.$WHACKD out there solely on https://t.co/HdSEYi9krq🙂 pic.twitter.com/rJ0Vi2Hpjj

— John McAfee (@officialmcafee) November 30, 2019

Now, SwitchDex’s token monitoring contract for WHACKD has begun to receive funds after lengthy intervals of inactivity. Some have speculated that these transactions might have been triggered by McAfee’s demise.

Nevertheless, on condition that the contract is receiving incoming funds, the related transactions weren’t essentially carried out at McAfee’s request. It’s attainable that McAfee’s demise merely inspired WHACKD token holders (or SwitchDex itself) to maneuver funds.

It also needs to be famous that though the contract’s title is “Epstein,” this merely appears to be the title that SwitchDEX selected for its contract, not a sign of any data on Epstein.

Although it’s conceivable that the transactions comprise hidden information or have been carried out in a sample, this doesn’t appear to be the case.

Blockchains Are Impractical for Knowledge Storage

There’s one other extra easy motive that the Ethereum blockchain is unlikely to be concerned in a knowledge leak.

Most blockchains can’t host massive quantities of knowledge. McAfee claimed that he had 31 TB of knowledge on authorities corruption. Ethereum’s ledger, nevertheless, accommodates lower than half a terabyte of knowledge.

Although McAfee might use an Ethereum transaction to broadcast a hyperlink to the true location of his information leak, doing so can be an pointless intermediate step towards no matter methodology of distribution he supposedly selected to make use of.

Within the unlikely occasion that McAfee did intend to leak data upon his demise, blockchain would definitely not make up his complete plan.

Disclaimer: On the time of penning this writer held lower than $75 of Bitcoin, Ethereum, and altcoins.