Interesting article @brennanhm - I was curious how this bet would turn out. However, I am not surprised at all that John McAfee backed down. I guess that it was just a matter of time. Hopefully nobody thought that he was really going to fulfill his bet if he lost "eating his own dick".
Btw, I agree with the statement that Bitcoin is like "digital gold". That is how I tend to describe the value of Bitcoin to people (people who know nothing about blockchain / cryptocurrency) since there is no use case yet for BTC.
Regarding newcomers I also think that many choose staking coins like NEO, ONT, XTZ etc.