John McAfee Calls Out Bitfi Wallet “Hater” For “Fake Review” + Crypto Community Insights

You got to hand it to John McAfee, no matter your personal bias or opinion, the cryptocurrency titan knows how to stir the pot and be at the forefront of innovation, technology and controversy all at the same time – and has a life long track record of doing it. But in his latest project involvement, the unhackable BitFi hardware wallet, has been getting a mixed bag of reviews in the press lately, although most reviews have been positive outside of a professional security researcher calling it ‘terrible'. However, in John McAfee’s opinion, even those few negative reviews are manufactured and adds to nothing productive as they are not even actual owners of the product nor have tested it out first-hand.

Rob Loggia's rebuttal to the fake "reviews" of BitFi. I say fake because none of the reviewers actually had acces to a BirFi wallet. Its impossible to say you reviewed something without actually seeing that thing. My haters are extreme.https://t.co/X5aw2DwKwI

— John McAfee (@officialmcafee) July 28, 2018

The tweet was linked to a blog post by Rob Loggia, who currently works as a Technical Advisor for McAfee’s crypto team (who also just launched their own Coin Market Cap competitor too). The opening passage by Loggia gives the gist of the problem with so called “reviews” that are prevalent with social media nowadays.

“Over the last several days I have seen a few negative “reviews” of the Bitfi online. The word “reviews” is in quotes because none of the pieces I have seen were written by people that actually owned the device. A strange way to review a product, and most of these were just rants by clearly disgruntled anti-fans of John McAfee. Yes, that is a thing for successful people, and McAfee has plenty. Even the real Satoshi Nakamoto candidate has come out of the termite-infested woodwork once again to tender his opinion on the Bitfi, for whatever that is worth to anyone these days.”

Here is the tweet from Dr. Craig S Wright, who arguably is right on par with often-positive commotion causing antics of John McAfee in all of his ‘I am Satoshi Nakamoto‘ ways:

https://twitter.com/ProfFaustus/status/1023139681058410496

Back to the blog post, in which sheds light on most critics of the wallet. In a back and forth series of who said what and who hasn't done what – one reviewer – Ryan Castelle faced the most heat in the article for his piece titled “Bitfi’s Hardware Wallet is Terrible.” To which Loggia’s reply was perfect.

“Castelluci makes several different attacks against the Bitfi. The first is a general objection to the security of brain wallet schemes. The author does not believe that these are secure. The next is to call into question the actual encoding scheme used by the Bitfi to calculate private keys. This is where the science comes in. Next, he goes on to attack the nature of the bounty offered by Bitfi to hack the device, describing the terms as unfair and the goal as unrealistic. Finally, not content with the technical aspects of the discussion, several attempts are made to question and impugn the reputation of the people behind the device.”

Underneath his angst surrounding this matter, there are clues that Castellucci does wish to be fair in some small, probably primal, way. He admits, after covering most of his points, that “for the some users, this really will provide adequate security.”

This kind of extortionate behavior is a known problem in the security industry, with “security professionals” routinely threatening to make companies look bad, or even to expose their data if they don’t take the ever so reasonable alternative of simply paying the researcher. The problem is not even limited to the security industry but to politics and business as well, as “Fake News” to damage one’s reputation has become a common phenomenon.

There has also been heat from other crypto community leaders, including WhalePool, who question the nature of the ‘open source code' attributed to the Bitfi wallet:

Don’t trust the new BitFi hardware wallet. pic.twitter.com/ywFG8pS0Ms

— Whalepool (@whalepool) July 28, 2018

and another non-believer who chimes in and shares his public opinion:

Hey @officialmcafee I now understand why you claim that bitfi wallet can't be hacked.

It's magnitudes more difficult indeed if the Bitfi hardware wallet is not open source.

But then again, you once claimed you were not hackable either until your own twitter account got hacked. pic.twitter.com/VHVonnbha0

— [ Romano ] (@RNR_0) July 29, 2018

However, these tweets are not exactly convincing and show little to no proof as to the unhackable tagline the Bitfi hardware wallet is currently associated with.. as this twitter user puts it as:

You can't hack someone else's Bitfi wallet because there's nothing stored on the hardware. The only way to access a wallet is to know the passphrase in the owner's head. The hardware is meaningless to everyone except the owner. It's very elegant.

— Sean (@SeanG294) July 27, 2018

and

I really all hackers can unit and start hacking the bitfi wallet to proof @officialmcafee is totally wrong. Or maybe John is really right?… 🤨 Anyway, i am grabbing 3units!!!!

— XRPJack (@ledxrp) July 28, 2018

and

Totally disagree with you. I have a Bitfi wallet and it works great. Maybe you should buy one before you judge it. @Bitfi6 help this guy understand. I feel way more secure with my Bitfi than my ledger.

— RAW MATERIAL (@RawMaterialNYC) July 27, 2018

and

Did you know?

Verge will be available soon on @officialmcafee Hardware-Wallet @Bitfi6. Bitfi produces the world's first, completely unbreakable hardware wallet for storing digital assets. #VergeFam #Verge #XVG #cryptocurrency #unhackable #secure #blockchain #bitcoin #altcoins pic.twitter.com/uJesSmbHaT

— Mikey (@mikey_bto) July 28, 2018

then back to the other side of the humpy-dumpty fence we see this:

We believe the BitFi wallet is vulnerable to MITM attacks. While this won’t fulfill the requirements for your bounty, we’re going to create a PoC and show how this can work (and how to fix the problem) https://t.co/NWI38WfeMi

— Blue Protocol – Securing The Crypto Age (@Blue_Protocol) July 28, 2018

along with Pavol's point of view and unique perspective:

#BitFi is basically a closed-source @TREZOR with a preloaded constant recovery seed that cannot be changed, disabled PIN protection and enabled passphrase protection. If this is unhackable, so is TREZOR. Why would you turn off 3 of 4 protection mechanisms and use just one?

— Pavol Rusnak (@pavolrusnak) July 28, 2018

As you can see, alot of mixed opinions coming about John McAfee's cryptocurrency wallet – but so far, the ball is in the community's court – either hack it or back it – as so far all claims within the crypto culture regarding the bold claims are yet to carry meri.

Even the ‘look over your shoulder and steal your phrase' angle – the crypto crusader had a viable answer in that the screen is narrow causing the viewing angle to be minimal and thus should not be able to see anything without direct access or vision (which we encourage not to do in highly public areas if possible).

If you want to read a fair review of BitFi Wallet, we, BitcoinExchangeGuide has one for you which John McAfee has mentioned in a tweet. Of course all of this boils down to answering which is the right bitcoin/cryptocurrency wallet for you.

https://t.co/spyAMMrzHa

— John McAfee (@officialmcafee) July 28, 2018

And as a reminder, what John as continued to do so well is put his money where his mouth is by offering up a $100,000 bounty reward in which you can find the details of this offer here:

For all you naysayers who claim that “nothing is unhackable” & who don’t believe that my Bitfi wallet is truly the world’s first unhackable device, a $100,000 bounty goes to anyone who can hack it. Money talks, bullshit walks. Details on https://t.co/ATFaxwUzQC

— John McAfee (@officialmcafee) July 24, 2018

So – as we said – the ball, or in this case, they key – is in your court crypto community – either hack it or back it as we said – otherwise Bitfi seems to be on par to compete with the likes of Trezor and Ledger and KeepKey as they offer a unique approach to storing your cryptocurrency funds in a secure way.

Let us know your thoughts below! If you have used the Bitfi wallet or plan on ordering, let us know as well. We plan to order and test out the up and coming wallet ourselves and will plan to do a very detailed and in-depth guide as to our impressions and usage. One thing is for sure – the story will not stop here and you can bet on us covering all angles and juicy soundbites coming from the crypto kingpin John McAfee as well as our beloved crypto culture and community.