Interwiev with John McAffe - 'No Way the Current System Can Survive’

John McAfee speaks with Cointelegraph about Facebook's Libra, the importance of privacy, Bitcoin and why he hasn't paid U.S. taxes in eight years. 

- When people outside of crypto think of John McAfee, they think computers, cybersecurity, anti-virus software. ( McAffee antivirus) But in the world of crypto and blockchain, you think of a yacht in tropical waters, passionate - and sometimes, admittedly, inebriated - tweets on tech and crypto... and an enviable amount of partying. 

When I called McAfee to talk on record, he was sitting at a table outside a cafe in Cuba with palm trees and patches of blue sky behind him. 

-Riporter- : You tweeted recently that Libra (Facebook's digital currency plan) is a "grotesque distortion of the original intent of Cryptocurrency - economic freedom."

John McAfee: Libra is a universal, digital identification that's going to be rolled into the cryptocurrency, meaning that everything that you do with that currency can be monitored and traced back to you.

Now, I'm a firm believer in privacy and even anonymity when it comes to our financial transactions.

" We each have the right to earn a living and to do what we wish with the money that we earn. I mean, if not, then we are still under the control of the financial system we're trying to escape from.

That is the purpose of digital currency: to give control of currency back to the people rather than to governments and institutions that can control the currency that we use. "

And you need to understand how important currency is. If we don't have freedom of currency, we don't have freedom of anything.

To get that freedom, we have to have a decentralized system, and we have to have a system that provides a degree of privacy - because without privacy, then we still are controlled.

The reverse of privacy is a system where everything that you do is known. This is what Facebook has produced.

Please God, we cannot tolerate this. Now, they can produce it, but we do not have to use it.

Please understand that using Facebook is the abdication of everything that we have worked for for almost 10 years. So understand what it is, let them do what they want, but please, God, do not accept it as your standard of currency.

It will be the end of your freedom and the end of your privacy.

Riporter - : Can you explain your stance a little bit more about income tax? Why do you say it's illegal in the U.S.?

JM:

Our constitution states very clearly, Congress shall pass no laws to inhibit, restrict or in any way hinder an individual's ability to earn a living.

Now, if you're taking 25% of my money, if you're making me work for you - the government - for one quarter or one third of the year, I insist that is inhibiting my ability to make a living.

OC: So, you're running your presidential campaign in exile. And the base of your campaign and your personal ideals is economic freedom, as you've been describing.

But on the other hand, Cuba is actually very low on the economic freedom index. I'm wondering if you see any contradiction in that.

JM: Well, not in the least. Let me ask you who creates that index? Is Cuba asked about it? Do people come to Cuba and actually study what's happening here? Let me tell you something: This is the most entrepreneurial society I have ever been in.

Yes, the government does restrict absolutely everything in terms of your making a living. However, there is an undercurrent just below that. There is an economic, entrepreneurial system, which I have never seen before. It's the same thing in every communist country - in Russia, it was the same.

So, you know people are making $20 a month, and yet, they're buying cars that cost $60,000. Now, how do you do that? Ask simple questions, right? They're doing it by being creative, by adhering to the laws of the government and at the same time, managing to make a good living.

Keep in mind, America has strangled the Cuban economy for 63 years through embargoes. They can't get building materials, they can't get paint to paint their frigging houses. They can't get parts to maintain their cars.

One of the first days I was here, I bought a Bic lighter and along the bottom were seven tiny, little holes. And I asked the person: What is this? He said, "Oh it's been refilled." They will refill a throw away lighter seven-10 times until the flint wears out. It costs $0.10 to have them refilled, rather than $2 to buy a new one. I've never seen creativity like that before.

So, people all band together to figure out how they can live. Jesus, I've never seen anything more entrepreneurial.

So, do not buy America's garbage propaganda, because I promise you: All those indexes, they have to pass the U.S. government's approval.

They have the airplanes, the bombs, the battleships. They tell the world what to do. They think they are the world's policeman. So, don't buy all this s--- about being that low on the index. How do you know? Come here and take a look. I promise you: You will be startled.

Mass adoption of crypto

OC: What needs to happen for people to use cryptocurrency on a mass scale?

JM: We have to have more friendly user interfaces. You're not going to get the average plumber and give him a crypto wallet and say, "This 150-digit number is an address. It means something. You must copy it somehow or take a picture of this."

No. Please, God. That scares people. We need something that has a name. Frank Smith. Okay, I want to send Frank Smith 50 Bitcoins or five or a fifth or whatever. That's cool. By the way, I don't think crypto trading is the end-all for crypto. I mean, that might be the entry point, but the end-all is where we f---ing buy things with the crypto that we have, for heaven's sake, rather than trading it constantly. But that's coming... that will come.

I think in 10 years there'll be no fiat anywhere in the world. Everything will be electronic, everything will be cryptocurrency.

In five years, I think the majority of people will be using crypto for the majority of their purchases. I mean, already you can buy houses, cars, almost everything with crypto - some services even.

You can even buy prostitutes - both male and female - with crypto these days. I think in two years time, we're going to see a quadrupling of both the number of businesses that accept crypto and the number of people that are using it not to trade, but to actually buy and sell.

OC: But people also need to be convinced that cryptocurrency is better for them to use than fiat currency.

JM: Here's an example - and if this doesn't sell you, nothing will. Let's say I'm doing business with somebody in England or Germany - in another country - and in order to get started, I've got to make a down payment. All right, so I've got to get out of bed, get dressed, hop in my car, drive to the bank, fill out a bunch of forms, sign them, get approval from the bank and they will say, "Well, within 24 hours, it'll be there."

Or I can not get out of bed, grab my smartphone - even if I do have to copy and paste a 150-character string - push send and go back to sleep. I've got 60 seconds versus an entire hour.

Which would you rather do? This is one example. Please, God. It's so superior to our current system that there is no way the current system can survive.

Bitcoin price predictions

OC: Recently, crypto analyst Mati Greenspan pointed out that there is an 86% chance that Bitcoin will be worth less than 50K by 2020. Are you concerned about the bet that you made?

JM: No, good Lord. Listen, anybody with common sense, and who can add and subtract and multiply, actually can count the total transactions in the world every year. And look at the number of dollars and yen and British pounds and euros and Chinese yuan. So, that's about $2,000 trillion. There's only 21 million Bitcoins and actually 7 million of those are lost forever.

If Bitcoin were the only currency, it would be worth a trillion dollars per Bitcoin. Now, it's not the only currency.

Take the growth at this point, the number of users and the fact that it's going to be three times as large by the end of 2020. If it's not worth a million dollars, then something's wrong with math.

I can't lose this bet. It's not possible mathematically. Understand, the market is an artificial thing right now. As Bitcoin gets more and more utility, it will be less artificial and more real. And it's getting that way right now. So, to those that go "nah, that's impossible," please go back to school and take fourth grade math - that's all you need. Figure it out.

OC: All right. Well, I think that's all I have for today. Thank you so much for your time.

JM: Thank you very much.