- John McAfee ‘Ghost’ project helped get ESH token up by 6,000% after an airdrop was announced
- GHOST tokens will be given to ESH holders 1:1 on May 25
- ESH crashed 86% on Monday
John McAfee is no stranger to a pump and dump scheme. In the 2017 bull run, and into 2018, he was famous for attaching his name to little known projects which he would shill mercilessly, driving up the value of the coin before whoever controlled his tokens sold at the top, dumping the price. This week was 2017 all over again as the Switch token (ESH), which is part of an airdrop campaign for the John McAfee GHOST privacy coin, pumped thousands of percent and then dumped days before the airdrop date after McAfee spent weeks shilling it.
John McAfee ‘Ghost’ Casts a Spell Over ESH
McAfee announced Ghost in mid-April, selling it as the ultimate privacy coin. At the time of the reveal, McAfee said that he had done a deal with the people behind Switch, the platform which will be powering McAfee’s decentralized exchange, where 25% of the supply of GHOST tokens would be airdropped to Switch (ESH) token holders on May 25 at a ratio of 1:1.
Those with experience of such things predicted what would happen – ESH would be heavily shilled by McAfee and Ghost, leading to a completely artificial run up on the value of ESH tokens before a dump in the price just before the airdrop date. And this is exactly what we got – ESH tokens shot up almost 6,000% over the course of two weeks, aided by incessant tweets on the Ghost Twitter feed:
You were waiting for a dip right?
its never too late
get #Esh to get free #ghost
Esh price = Ghost price#esh #sdex #freecoin #btc #cryptpcommunity #ghost #xsence pic.twitter.com/bxIdAL7Tu1— Ghost by McAfee (@Ghost_coins) May 13, 2020
Having presumably sold all their tokens, on Monday the ESH whales, probably including many behind the scenes of all the involved projects, sold at huge profits, dumping the token price by 86% in less than two hours:
For many, this was reminiscent of other such scam pumps from the crazy days of the last bull run:
My god. $ESH scam pumping like 2017. pic.twitter.com/RyjYQjQSTf
— Digital α (@Digital777Alpha) May 11, 2020
Given that the exchanges that serviced the ESH token don’t have stoplosses, only holders who happened to be online at the time would have been able to save their portfolios. The Switch community was not a happy place after the crash, with newcomers being inducted into the John McAfee pump and dump hall of fame:
Some however brushed off the price crash and claimed that they were holding for the John McAfee GHOST token:
Well said @Loggiaonfire
I’ll also continue to hold $esh & look forward to getting free $ghost soon.
If there’s anyone who can effectively promote usage of a privacy coin, it’s @officialmcafee
With real usage, a coin builds value which is what everyone wants, but seldom has. https://t.co/NUWLuQsEw8 pic.twitter.com/0PilGjChfh
— CryptoSpawn (@crypto_spawn) May 19, 2020
Things went from bad to worse for the reputation of the John McAfee Ghost project as it was soon alleged that the whitepaper was a copy and paste job from the PivX whitepaper:
As an expert, dedicated team that has been pioneering and tirelessly developing a privacy centric Proof of Stake blockchain since 2016, #PIVX is extremely disappointed to see @officialmcafee @GhostbyMcAfee $ESH $GHOST blatantly plagiarizing the Sept 2018 PIVX whitepaper. pic.twitter.com/fdwhr6E6ea
— PIVX (@_PIVX) May 17, 2020
Ghost dismissed this as FUD, then admitted that it “should have taken more time to develop the white paper”…before going on to shill ESH token some more. SMH.
