The programming wiz has had many efforts in cybersecurity, cryptocurrency and IT, but John McAfee is also known for his quirky stunts and tweets. In today's article, we will try to estimate John McAfee's net worth by looking at his accomplishments and his professional losses.
Career John McAfee
Born in 1945, John David McAfee is an Anglo-American programmer and businessman. From 1968 to 1970, McAfee was employed as a programmer at NASA. He then joined the creators of the first ENIAC digital computer from the company UNIVAC. His next job was as a software designer at Xerox.
In the early 1980s, McAfee joined Lockheed and while working there saw first-hand the impact of the first computer virus. This is what drove McAfee to start developing the antivirus software it is still known for today.
In 1987 McAfee Associates was founded and the IT company became successful when it launched its McAfee antivirus software. McAfee was active at the helm of the company until 1994, when he sold his shares for $ 100 million to Intel.
McAfee then founded Tribal Voice, which created one of the first Internet messengers, called PowWow, but the project was not so successful. In 2000, he invested and became one of the directors of the company Zone Labs, which developed firewall software. The company was then acquired in 2003 by Check Point Software.
In 2010, he founded QuorumEx, a company that would manufacture quorum-based antibiotics, but that company also did not succeed.
McAfee then fled to Belize on charges of his alleged involvement in numerous criminal activities. After returning to the United States in December 2012, Future Tense Central was created, which was first designed to produce a computer network security device, and then became a business incubator.
The next project developed by McAfee was the Cognizant cybersecurity application, which checked the permissions of all applications installed on a smartphone. But after the release of Android Lollipop 5.0 in 2015, this feature was installed by default and made the application obsolete. In 2016 and again in 2020, McAfee ran for president but lost both elections.
In 2016, John McAfee became the CEO of MGT Capital Investments, a company initially dedicated to social games, but his attention then turned to cybersecurity. The company then set up its own mining Bitcoin , and during that time, the company shares have risen in price. McAfee resigned from the company 2 years later.
Since 2018, McAfee has become the CEO of Luxcore, a company focused on providing enterprise cryptography solutions.
Fortune John McAfee 2020
It is impossible to estimate John McAfee's net worth exactly, with some claiming that he is between $ 4 million and $ 15 million, while others even believe that he still has $ 100 million. The estimates put the value of the technology guru to 4 million should also be taken with a grain of salt, since they offer no concrete details on how they have got the money.
According to the New York Times, McAfee lost most of the money it accumulated in 2008 during the financial crisis. In a Forbes article, it was stated that McAfee only had $ 4 million of the $ 100 million he made by selling McAfee Associates.
This is the main argument put forward to estimate that John McAfee's net worth is $ 4 million, but it has not been clarified whether it was only McAfee. However, for the moment, the Forbes article cannot be found online. There was a reference to the Forbes article in the New York Times in 2009 as the source of the estimated wealth of $ 4 million. Curiously, there is no mention of McAfee in the original Forbes article.
McAfee fled and lived in Belize for several years until December 2012 because he was charged with the murder of his neighbor.
A CNN article published in 2014 wrote:
" McAfee told CNNMoney on Tuesday that he had lost everything. Only a tiny fraction of his one-time net worth of $ 100 million survived the 2008 stock market crash. But his fortune really took a hit in 2012, when McAfee fled Belize police who aggressively sought him out for questioning. the death of his neighbor.
The government raided its jungle complex and seized everything inside. The buildings of the McAfee property were then burned in suspicious circumstances. "
“Everything I owned was in Belize. I left with nothing in my pocket, ”said McAfee at the time.
McAfee also said that most of his residual wealth was in the vast art collection he had left in the country. " He claims that the government of Belize has auctioned off many of his goods, but his works of art have never shown up, " - read the CNN article.
The NYT article also said he sold his 10,000 square foot home in Colorado for $ 5.7 million, as well as his 5.34 acre oceanfront property in Hawaii for $ 1.5 million. dollars (we will take into account these $ 7.2 million later in our article).
After leaving Belize, he started in 2014 the cybersecurity company Future Tense Central and launched the DCentral 1 app, but there is no way of knowing how much he earned with these companies. During his exile in Canada, he undertook consulting activities by giving advice on acquisitions, technology and internal restructuring to companies. Again, no data can show how much he earned during this period.
In 2016, he started working for MGT, and during his stay there, he received a bonus of $ 600,000, while receiving a salary and consulting fees of half a million dollars. Two years later, McAfee retired and took away 5 million company shares worth approximately $ 100,000 ($ 0.02 per share). Based on these figures, we can estimate that during his stay at MGT, he earned about $ 1.7 million.
In 2017, John McAfee began to actively support and defend cryptocurrencies and their use. He then started forecasting cryptocurrency prices on Twitter. It was then assumed that he was paid by the owners of cryptocurrency projects $ 100,000 per tweet to promote their coins and increase their ICOs. McAfee promoted 50 ICOs at the end of 2018. It is estimated that he earned approximately $ 5 million via Twitter.
According to some documents, he was also paid in cryptocurrencies, with an average payment of 8 BTC per tweet, which means that he collected around 500 BTC in total. With the current BTC rate, this amount would be at least $ 4.5 million. McAfee has approximately $ 6.2 million to date.
By the way, we don't know how much McAffe has earned as CEO of Luxcore.
John McAfee's Fortune: Minimum and Maximum Estimates
We have the estimate of $ 6.2 million made above taking into account his past commercial efforts. With its sold properties (which we know), $ 7.2 million added to $ 6.2 million, and with the $ 4 million, that makes $ 17.4. Assuming he has spent or lost some of the money earned on his properties, he should have a minimum of around $ 10 million.
Conclusion
This article has been devoted to the estimation of John McAfee's net worth. Keep in mind that this was just speculation based on the data we have, which means that he could actually have a lot more or a lot less in his bank account.
