John McAfee Takes on CEO Position at Blockchain Startup

A startup called Luxcore has announced a new CEO – none other than John McAfee himself.

We are excited to announce @officialmcafee as the new CEO of Luxcore! John’s appointment is part of a massive personnel reorganization designed to drive significant and rapid business growth for $LUX. It’s the dawning of a #NewEra. https://t.co/dMuyfU4TF6

Whoa! London Summit’s new site is LIVE

— LUXCORE (@LUX_COIN) August 13, 2018

The company took McAfee on as a senior adviser in April, and now Luxcore co-founder and CEO Brian Oliver “has agreed to step down” to make room for the eccentric businessman. According to its official blog, Luxcore wishes Oliver “all the best in [his] future endeavours within and beyond the blockchain space.”

I have accepted the position of CEO of LUXCORE. They have been working hard behind the scenes and will soon announce the availability of Blockchain features we have all been waiting for. I will still continue lead Team McAfee on its adventurous journey. https://t.co/2ZznLwbNZG

— John McAfee (@officialmcafee) August 13, 2018

A “technological marvel”

According to its website, Luxcore is blockchain company that “focuses on designing and building enterprise ready security and privacy products.”

It aims to launch a cryptocurrency wallet secured by address obfuscation and multi-signature transactions, smart contract capability, a private, secure network for institutions called ‘Parallel Masternodes’ and a inter-blockchain communication system called ‘Luxgate’ (that the website describes as “a technological marvel”).

The website claims that using the PMN system can bring a given institution’s security level up to 1,000 points from the 500 that it would achieve by working with two levels of standard firewall security. The website does not explain how these points are measured exactly, but 1,000 is twice as much as 500, so that is good.

It is powered by a proof of stake consensus system, which means that block verification is performed only by nodes that hold some of the native token. In the case of Luxcore, ‘Masternodes’ must hold 16,120 LUX tokens. Lexcore also uses SegWit, which is an upgrade to the Bitcoin blockchain that effectively halves the weight of transaction data, making transactions faster.

Most of these services are due to be launched later this year.

The McAfee seal of approval

John McAfee is best known for the antivirus programme that bears his name, although he resigned from that company in 1994. More recently he has become known as a cryptocurrency evangelist. He has attracted suspicion in the past because his enthusiastic endorsements of new cryptocurrencies on his heavily-followed Twitter profile often caused their prices to dramatically spike.

He commented on his new job: “Luxcore’s rapid development of game-changing technology requires a rapid escalation of business growth. In order to achieve the company’s growth targets, there will be a heightened emphasis on strategic marketing of products such as the PoS web wallet and the yet-to-be released LuxGate cross-platform exchange. I am excited about our aggressive growth strategy and the many innovations yet to come.”

We last reported on John McAfee when he declared a war of words against the Securities and Exchange Commission, the American financial watchdog. This was in response to the regulator announcing that it would be regulating some ICOs as securities. Shortly afterwards, reports emerged of him hiring a small army to defend his house because he was being gang-stalked.

My external security system. On top of this I have 8 cameras that no-one knows about. I have 4 Green Berets, one Navy Seal, 2 ex Blackwater SOF operatives, one ex Army Military Police and two.ex Army soldiers as my live in Security. Plus Janice and I, heavily armed. Questions? pic.twitter.com/B0xVPbFJuC

— John McAfee (@officialmcafee) April 16, 2018

McAfee firmly believed that the SEC that was behind the harassment. This wasn’t the first time that he was targeted by a national agency – he used to live in Belize, where he suffered at the hands of the government when he refused to cooperate with its investigation into the murder of his neighbour. He told Newsweek in 2017 that it was still on his tail.