The Australian co-creator of Dogecoin has described Elon Musk as a “grifter” who sells a vision that he pretends to understand while not even knowing how to run basic code.
Jackson Palmer is an Australian-born software developer who created Dogecoin, a meme-based cryptocurrency that soon became one of the world’s most valuable digital currencies. He stopped working on the cryptocurrency in 2015 and has since denounced the technology.
In a rare, wide-ranging interview with Crikey coinciding with the launch of his new podcasts about grifts, he spoke about Elon Musk, the cryptocurrency “winter” and the mainstreaming of rentier capitalism.
Palmer says he spoke with Musk over Twitter direct messages after he developed a script to automatically report cryptocurrency scams in a user’s replies: “Elon reached out to me to get hold of that script and it became apparent very quickly that he didn’t understand coding as well as he made out. He asked, “How do I run this Python script?”
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Elon Musk has repeatedly promoted Dogecoin as part of his freewheeling, shitposting schtick, and mentions of the memecoin as recently as this week has sent its value spiking. But Palmer is no fan of Musk or other billionaires.
“About a year ago when Musk was saying something about crypto, I said Elon Musk was and always will be a grifter but the world…
