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Dogecoin Creator Says Crypto Is a Scam

Jackson Palmer went on Twitter for the first time in two years to remind us that the wealthy are ruining everything—even cryptocurrency.

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Photo: Dan Kitwood (Getty Images)

Dogecoin co-creator Jackson Palmer isn’t on social media much. After nuking his YouTube channel and turning his Twitter account private back in mid-2019, the software engineer hadn’t made a peep on the platforms at all; not even when prices for his meme-y crypto reached record highs earlier this year. That blackout ended today when Palmer briefly resurfaced on Twitter with an important reminder: cryptocurrency’s a scam and always has been.

“After years of studying it, I believe that cryptocurrency is an inherently right-wing, hyper-capitalistic technology built primarily to amplify the wealth of its proponents through a combination of tax avoidance, diminished regulatory oversight and artificially enforced scarcity,” he tweeted out on Wednesday afternoon.

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Palmer went on to say that while crypto’s biggest fans often point to it as an equitable alternative to the Big Banks because of the currency’s decentralized nature, the truth is that the two share the same problem: rich people. As he (rightfully) noted, the bulk of the crypto community is controlled by “a powerful cartel of wealthy figures” who are turning decentralized finance into a system that largely benefits those at the top—kind of like the centralized systems crypto claims to replace.

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Cryptocurrencies, generally, have had a hell of a year. Bitcoin, the most well known of the bunch, saw its price peak at over $63,000 in mid-April before crashing a month later to the mid-$30,000s. Dogecoin, meanwhile, rode the crypto boom “to the moon,” as they say, jumping from about $0.06 per dogecoin to over $0.68 per coin, then similarly plunged to somewhere in the middle. The entire time, of course, the value of crypto at all remained debatable.

Palmer’s full thread itself is well worth the read, even if you disagree with what he’s saying—and there are going to be plenty that do. One of the many awful traits of the crypto community that Palmer points out is that “even the most modest critique of cryptocurrency will draw smears from the powerful figures in control of the industry,” not to mention the ire of everyday investors terrified of losing it all. Just something worth remembering when those figures inevitably fart out some bad-faith tweets saying Palmer’s just jealous he never cashed in when he had the chance.