The Tweet
About 2 hours ago, John McAfee released a tweet with just the link "mcafeecoin.com". A coin from a tech legend? I had to investigate (short summary available in last paragraph).
The Website
The website indicates the coin is to fund tech startups. The website makes clear that the ICO is not recommended for those in the USA or Singapore, which is pretty standard in the cryptocurrency world with the legislation surrounding securities and the debate about ICO's being securities sales. The McAfee Coin team is compromised of John McAfee, a VC fund manager (Yale Reisoleil), and a fintech specialist (John Zhu). The home page references "Token: MCF", which is the first of 3 tokens referenced in my research. This is where it gets interesting. This is an investment firm.
From the website:
Job Postings Give Us Clues
The references to "crowd wisdom bots" combined with the Job Postings for those with experience in AI and Machine Learning, indicates that this is likely going to be similar to what we hoped NMR would be - a coin representing a stake in a AI-driven investment firm (hedge fund in Numerai's case). It looks like MCF holders will have the ability to help determine where the money will be invested and the opportunity to be invested in.
The 3rd job posting on the website is for a Ethereum Smart Contract Developer, which indicates that the project will likely be Ethereum based or potentially an Ethereum fork. Considering the scaling issues that have already been noted with Ethereum, I'm hoping for the latter.
Beyond Seed Funding
The homepage also references IOB as the second of three tokens I found in my research. The whitepaper summary and whitepaper focus on IOB as a fund for "Decentralized & Distributed-Ledger Startups in China". The whitepaper lays out a pretty standard approach, though how decentralization and acquisition are considered part of the same strategy is a bit vague.
The Third Token
The first two tokens, McAfee Token (MCF) and McAfee China Crowdchain Technology Fund (IOB) are mentioned with connection to two projects that are intertwined, an investment firm and what is essentially a VC firm. I am not clear on the differences between the two. The third token is only mentioned as "BXB ICO: September 30, 2017". There is not information provided on it.
Clarification
I replied to the original tweet to ask when there will be clarification and received the following response:
I will update when we have information, seemingly "shortly before the ICO" in 2.5 months (September 30, 2017).
In the meantime, I am hopeful that the McAfee coin team will hire one of my colleagues that are capable of developing a website without the use of sxl.cn (China's version of Wix.com) and Sway.com along with a technical writer to convey their project without drowning in marketing hype.
Summary
McAfee Coin, potentially an Ethereum token used representative of a stake in a ¥1 billion investment firm and IOB, potentially an Ethereum token representative of a stake in a €200 million VC firm. No word on what BXB potentially is, other than the possibility of an Ethereum token. There is no github, no bitcointalk announcement, no technical details, no social media available at this time.