Dogecoin co-creator – Jackson Palmer – is back with strong words for the cryptocurrency industry, community, and influencers. This time, his target is Mark Cuban. The Adobe engineer has accused Mark of running a grift by trying to claim a stake in the extractive, grifty system of cryptocurrency.
Palmer was one of the two designers behind Dogecoin – a memecoin that gained popularity among the general public and the adoration of Elon Musk, the richest man in the world. Ironically, he and his co-creator Billy Markus designed the coin as a mockery of the speculative irrationality that characterizes cryptocurrency investing. Markus has still welcomed the cryptocurrency community with a more open-minded attitude towards the space but Palmer has outrightly hated it for years.
In an interview with Business Insider, Palmer said that he believes that Mark Cuban has “drunk the Kool-Aid” surrounding cryptocurrency and non-fungible tokens (NFTs). In his words, “Mark Cuban isn’t getting paid as a celebrity to promote this stuff,” he explained. “He actually has kind of been indoctrinated into believing that these things are the future”.
Palmer said, “Back in 2013 — or even when crypto was first coming out in 2008 — there was a portion of it that was actually a response to Wall Street and the overarching capitalist system”. Since then, he said he quickly realized that cryptocurrency’s biggest voices simply wanted to create an exploitative system that placed themselves at the top of the food chain.
Palmer included Marc Andreesen and Chris Dixon alongside Cuban in that group. The billionaire and investor are general partners at Andreesen Horowitz, one of the most invested venture capital firms in the industry. Neither Andreesen nor Dixon responded to Palmer’s comments. Mark Cuban, however, said Palmer’s statements were nothing new. He said, “Sounds like the same thing that has been said about every new technology I’ve been involved in”.
In May, Palmer targeted Elon Musk with similar statements, claiming he was a grifter who was trying to destroy Twitter. He also claimed that Elon Musk doesn’t know how to run basic code. Elon Musk responded to Palmer’s comments the following day, calling the engineer a tool with the coding skills of a child. However, the billionaire is in good terms with Markus, whom he regularly shares memes with on Twitter.
Featured Image Source: www.decrypt.co
