No, Kim Dotcom never left. Yes, he is about to launch a new version of Megaupload. Yes, his ability to promote the new service on Twitter remains intact. Yes, he promised that what happened with Mega and the original Megaupload will not happen again. And yes, it will come loaded with several novelties, starting with the fact that it will use the original Megaupload database. With this, users of the old and seized service will get greater privileges under the new version, and Dotcom is already talking about "100 million users" on the first day of activity.
Personally, I believe that if the US authorities failed to put Kim Dotcom behind bars, it is because they will never be able to do so. The battle that this entrepreneur-hacker-magnate-philanthropist-producer-musician-Call of Duty expert has fought has turned him into a kind of "Pirate Bay in the flesh", and besides still being free, he is already planning his return to the market in the form of Megaupload 2.0. His legal conflict is still far from over, after being declared eligible for extradition to the United States, and of course, after filing the corresponding appeal. But that does not stop him from working on the development of a new service that will not only seek to surpass the previous ones, but will also recognize those who were his original users.
What does this mean exactly? Dotcom himself revealed it on his Twitter account: "Surprise: Most Megaupload accounts will be reinstated with Premium privileges on the new Megaupload. 100 million users on day 1. Expect an e-mail." We are not yet sure if this "upgrade" to premium profiles will reach all users (whether they were premium or not in the original service), but the big question here is how Dotcom managed to keep a copy of the database. Until then, all we know on the technical side of Megaupload 2.0 is that it will offer 100 gigabytes of online storage, unlimited syncing across all our devices, unlimited transfers, built-in encryption, servers outside the United States (for obvious reasons), and code developed "from scratch", meaning it will not depend on the previous projects.
To close, the latest news is that "Megaupload and Bitcoin had sex", and that "there is a pregnancy", according to Dotcom's words. Definitive confirmation is still missing, but if we follow this, it is not hard to imagine Megaupload 2.0 with Bitcoin support as an enabled payment method. As for the release date, that is known precisely: January 20, 2017, marking the fifth anniversary of Megaupload's closure. Those interested in getting beta access before the launch have the possibility to post "#Megaupload is coming back" on Twitter, and will very soon receive additional details.
