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- Dogecoin co-creator Jackson Palmer slammed cryptocurrency as an "inherently right-wing, hyper-capitalistic technology" in a tweet storm on Wednesday.
- Palmer said cryptocurrency uses technology to circumvent regulatory oversight, removing key "safety nets" for the average investor.
- His co-creator Billy Markus responded to his tweets with a meme of a man with a Doge head shrugging.
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After a long period of silence, one of Dogecoin's founders, Jackson Palmer, took to Twitter on Wednesday blasting cryptocurrency as an "inherently right-wing, hyper-capitalistic technology."
In a tweet storm, he wrote that cryptocurrency takes the worst parts of capitalism and uses technology to circumvent regulatory oversight, removing key "safety nets" for the average investor, leaving them vulnerable to cryptocurrency's volatility. He said this is why he will never go back to dabbling in cryptocurrency.
-Jackson Palmer (@ummjackson) July 14, 2021
He also blasted cryptocurrency as a tool to make "profiteering more efficient for those at the top," and said that it's designed to make the rich richer through "tax avoidance, diminished regulatory oversight and artificially enforced scarcity."
This was not Palmer's first time speaking out against crypto.
When Dogecoin soared to $2 billion in 2018, he wrote an op-ed on Vice, saying "something is very wrong."
Palmer said inexperienced investors were buying up low-priced coins in hopes they would become the next Bitcoin, causing market hysteria. But this "get rich quick" mentality detracted from the ideals of using cryptocurrency as an alternative that does away with "the need for trust in financial institutions," especially after the 2008 financial crisis.
Palmer and his co-founder, Billy Markus, created Dogecoin in 2013 as a "joke" currency as alternative cryptocurrencies flooded the market, promising to be the next big thing.
Featuring the Doge meme - a Shiba Inu dog accompanied by text in Comic Sans - the coin was created "in three hours" and for "sillies" according to Markus in a Reddit post. But it soon took on a life of its own online, with people drawn to its low price and its novelty. Many used it for "tipping" on Reddit; the subreddit r/dogecoin has 2.1 million subscribers.
For a coin that started as a joke, it is now valued at $25.8 billion, as of time of writing.
Palmer and Markus are no longer part of Dogecoin. Both left in 2015 after deciding that the cryptocurrency was not aligned with their values.
Palmer's co-creator, Markus, retweeted Palmer's Twitter thread and responded with a GIF.
-Shibetoshi Nakamoto (@BillyM2k) July 14, 2021
Markus did not respond immediately to Insider's request for comment.