Dogecoin co-creator takes aim at cryptos
Crypto promoters are “waiting for a fresh batch of fools to come in", said Jackson Palmer
Jackson Palmer, the co-creator of dogecoin (DOGE), has taken aim at the crypto-asset sector after he “realised it didn’t really matter if you were producing any value any more, the whole world has become this snake oil scheme”.
Continued perseverance in crypto
In an interview with online Australian magazine Crikey, Palmer said over the past year he thought the crypto space “would implode a bit more quickly and people would learn their lesson”, but instead he has seen “continued perseverance”.
“You see these big people with big money getting involved and that means it’s not slowing down,” he added.
The meme-inspired coin founded in 2013
Palmer, a software engineer and marketing analyst, created dogecoin nine years ago with IBM software engineer Billy Markus. The meme-inspired coin was invented as a joke in response to the altcoins that Palmer had noticed pop up at the time and were trying to take market share away from bitcoin.
Both Palmer and Markus sold their DOGE well before the cryptocurrency surged to $0.7376 – the coin’s all-time high according to CoinMarketCap – on 8 May 2021.
Having almost reached a market capitalisation of $90bn in large part due to the vocal support of Tesla CEO Elon Musk, the cryptocurrency has lost 88% of its value and as of 30 May was worth just less than $11.3bn.
Where fools rush in
When asked during the interview whether the crypto market is currently in a so-called cryptocurrency winter, Palmer said he saw “heaps of money being funnelled in by crypto promoters” who are “waiting for a fresh batch of fools to come”.
What is your sentiment on DOGE/USD?
He added: “This happens in cycles. You wait for a while for the collective memory of the world to forget about how much of a scam it is. We’ve had ICOs [initial coin offerings], DAOs [decentralised autonomous organisations], now it’s NFTs [non-fungible tokens]. Now I’m seeing initial game offerings as the latest thing.”
Journalists come under Palmer’s fire
The Australian also criticised journalists who cover the cryptocurrency sector, accusing them of getting on the “gravy train”. He added: “The difference with cryptocurrency is that your news has to take a positive slant. If you’re writing doom and gloom, you’ll get fewer eyeballs.”
Crypto excesses need ‘political’ solution
Palmer, who expressed dissatisfaction with the pro-crypto attitudes of some Australian politicians, said that the current excesses and abuses he sees in the current cryptocurrency world will “have to be solved at a political level”.
He added: “I think there’s going to need to be a crash. I think we’re well overdue for some sort of pop, and I don’t think it’s going to be a big boom. It’s going to be a lot more painful, and unfortunately it will probably affect minorities and those lower end of the socioeconomic spectrum when it happens.”
Dogecoin was trading up 3.7% at 17:00 BST (UTC +1) at $0.08526, down almost 3% in the past week.
