John McAfee has made a miraculous return to X despite being dead for over three years, and his returning message is promoting a cryptocurrency modelled after his famous antivirus.
Social media is home to much of the weird and wonderful, but one of the last things you'd expect is to see the dead come back to life and start promoting their very own cryptocurrency.
Much of the last few months have been defined by crypto coins, as Bitcoin breached $100,000 for the first time ever and the President of the United States released his very own official coin - only to see it sink due to a rival release from his wife.
Unfortunately a major part of the industry relies on so-called 'meme coins' that mimic the likeness of popular celebrities, famous animals, or online jokes, and it was only this past week that one unlucky trader lost $1,000,000 in a matter of hours to a fake Barron Trump-themed coin.
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As reported by Mashable, seemingly the latest to join this collection is 'AIntivirus', which John McAfee has promoted as an 'AI version' of himself on his official X account despite dying in June 2021, over three years ago.
This isn't the first time that AI has been used to create fake versions of famous people, but it's somewhat of a novelty to see it associated with a crypto and promoted by the deceased themselves.
The post - which declares "you didn't think I would miss this cycle did you?" - has garnered over 4,200,000 million views and thousands of reposts and likes, with many unsure of what to think.
There's even an additional post referencing AIntivirus on his page that's a Medium link, supposedly 'introducing' the bizarre crypto coin.
This isn't the first time that a celebrity's social media has promoted crypto in an unusual manner, but most of those previous instances were the result of the account being hacked.
If you believe John's account though this is, in his words, the "real deal," as another post ensures readers that "John's account has not been hacked."
Many have pointed to the notion that if this was the case the tweet should read 'my account' as opposed to 'John's account', but you do also have to remember that McAfee is still dead, and likely cannot talk in the first person.
"Why do I feel like this account has been hacked," one reply perhaps facetiously asks, whereas another denotes that they "didn't have this on my bingo card."
While it would be natural for anyone's first, second, and third instincts to point towards McAfee's account being compromised, a major twist has indeed arrived.
His widow, Janice Elizabeth McAfee, has posted a video on her own account revealing that AIntivirus is in fact real, and John's account has never been hacked.
She details that "I have not laughed or smiled this much since John has passed away" due to the hilarious replies across social media, but asserts: "I can promise you that my first goal is to only honor John's legacy and his memory" through the release of the crypto and AI pairing.
We'll certainly be keeping our eyes on how this all develops, but I doubt many stories will have as many twists and turns for a while.