McAfee: '$1M Bitcoin or I'll Eat My Own...'

In July 2017, antivirus pioneer John McAfee tweeted that Bitcoin would reach $500,000 within three years or he would "eat my own d*** on national television." He later raised the target to $1 million by the end of 2020.

Bitcoin ended 2020 at approximately $29,000. McAfee did not follow through on his bet.

The prediction became crypto's most famous price call because of its sheer outrageousness. McAfee backed up the bet with a mathematical model he claimed showed exponential BTC adoption curves. He posted daily price targets on Twitter. He never wavered publicly. Crypto Twitter ate it up.

Behind the spectacle, McAfee was running a different game. He was getting paid six figures to promote ICO tokens without disclosing the payments. The SEC charged him with making over $11 million from undisclosed crypto promotions. The DOJ hit him with tax evasion charges on top of that. He hadn't filed a US tax return in years.

McAfee fled the US and spent years on the run - on a boat, in the Bahamas, in Cuba, in the Dominican Republic. He live-tweeted the whole thing. He ran for president. Twice. From a boat.

Spanish police arrested him in October 2020 at Barcelona airport on the US tax evasion warrant. He spent eight months in a Spanish jail awaiting extradition. On June 23, 2021, hours after a Spanish court approved his extradition to the US, McAfee was found dead in his cell. Official cause: suicide. His final Instagram post, months earlier, had said he would never kill himself.

McAfee later admitted the $1M prediction was a marketing stunt. But by then nobody was laughing. His Bitcoin call remains the gold standard for absurd crypto predictions - a reminder that confidence and competence have nothing to do with each other.