John McAfee’s Freedom Coin set to liberate us from the need for money altogether

The controversial Bitcoin bull John McAfee is one of the more colorful figures in the cryptocurrency industry, so when he posts a Tweet about launching his own Cryptocurrency, people take notice. McAfee became famous initially for his anti-virus software company, possibly the first of its kind in the early days of the internet.

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Since then he has become a leading proponent of Bitcoin over the years, but looked like a bit of a shill during the past two years, being rumored to have sold his endorsements for many random coins in exchange for a substantial price.

However, he has always remained an outspoken political activist against excessive government oversight, and has also put out one of the most bullish predictions of all for Bitcoin, saying it will reach $1 million by the end of 2020.

n recent months he has not only been on the run from the IRS for years of tax evasion, but he has also launched his own campaign to run for president of America, while hiding out on his yacht in the Caribbean. He is quite open about the fact that paying tax is not his priority, which further shows his resolve to decry government oversight. His presidential aspirations are, as he said himself, not serious as he doesn’t expect to win, but more of a publicity stunt to promote Bitcoin.

Now he wants to launch his own McAfee Freedom Coin sometime in the fall. In a website dedicated to the project , which is no more than a brief essay with no details, he discusses his philosophical angle of approach and why this specific coin of his will be different and why it is needed:

“What is needed is a coin disconnected from fiat currencies and from other cryptocurrencies alike — a coin with zero cash-in value, yet accepted universally … It is not based on any commodity nor is it connected to the value or behavior of any external item or entity. The value of the coin will always be zero in relation to any other currency yet it's natural market value is free, completely, to grow.”

It sounds classically cryptic at this stage, and considering McAfee’s reputation, reaction to his proposed Freedom Coin will likely be mixed.

Nevertheless he does make a few valid points, like the fact that even cryptocurrencies have their value determined not by users and suppliers but the market, which is usually fine in capitalism where the market determines the value of any product, but McAfee reminds us that the market is dominated by fear, greed and manipulation among other economic conditions which leave any cryptocurrency open to external whims.

In true Libertarian form, he also sees his Freedom Coin as being the solution to real economic freedom, hence the name. To attain this it must be disconnected from any value in relation to fiat currency as well as other cryptocurrency, like Bitcoin. His philosophy definitely attains new conceptual ethical heights in that this proposed ideal coin will have zero “cash-in” value, yet still be accepted universally.

In other words you can’t trade it for a profit, you can’t equate it in value to any fiat, and yet it can be traded for goods like shoes or cars, example he uses in his essay.

Basically it is “the problem of exchange” that McAfee wishes to confront head-on here. He calls it a new structural concept – a coin that will always be worth zero in relation to any other currency and yet free to grow in market value – if you can make sense of that paradox.

McAfee also admits that his new proposed coin will not be anything technologically new, and that the design of it is secondary to its unique approach to understanding the evolution of cryptocurrency.

He wants it to be able to give the Holy Grail to all, namely economic freedom. By launching a Freedom Coin which is free from the ability to be traded up, free from fiat value, free from exchanges, and yet gives economic freedom, McAfee is continuing in his usual enigmatic style of launching a presidential candidacy but not wanting or intending to win, of launching a cryptocurrency but not intending it to have a value.

He seems to be dealing in abstracts here overall, and being a celebrity of sorts he will, no doubt, find some active supporters for this kind of transcendent approach to crypto, with a name that says it all – the pursuit of freedom, akin to liberation from the corruption and even the very constructs of money or currency. There’s no saying where this could lead. If it’s anything like his recent foray into the new Apollo Coin, it may well have a name that aspires to the moon and might even get there, for as we all know, Apollo 11 successfully made it to land on the moon in 1969 – or did it?