The popular, seemingly meme-powered crypto Dogecoin has shown impressive price performance in the past weeks as the rest of the crypto market has suffered. One person who isn’t impressed, though, is its creator.
In a recent Netflix documentary explaining cryptocurrencies, Jackson Palmer cuts a rather embarrassed figure. Sitting sheepishly on a grey couch in a couldn’t-care-less hoody and white T-shirt, he can’t get through a sentence regarding the (then) half-a-billion dollar market cap of his creation, Dogecoin, without a fit of giggles.
“It just blows my mind,” is his assessment of that situation.
His reaction to Dogecoin’s recent growth to a total network value of over $750m, has been equally incredulous.
He has long-warned of the dangers of speculating on cryptocurrencies – indeed, by his own admission, he owns very little cryptocurrency, and currently owns none of the crypto he created, having got rid of most of his (also allegedly relatively small) hodling back in 2015.
Actually, when we say Palmer ‘created’ Dogecoin, that’s not strictly true. While working for Adobe in Sydney, Australia, he certainly came up with the name, and registered the domain as a joke – a sly commentary at the altcoin boom of the time. The crypto itself, however, was the creation of Billy Marcus.
It was he who forked LuckyCoin – itself a fork of Litecoin, which is a fork of Bitcoin – after finding the dogecoin.com website via an IRC chat room. It was he who mined the first Dogecoin, December 2013.
Dogecoin really found fame via Reddit, where its not-so-serious demeanour and meme-friendly Shiba Inu-fronted persona instantly attracted a subreddit following, which promptly began to use it as a throwaway way of tipping for content they enjoyed. The culmination of this community’s growth and efforts infamously saw the Dogecoin Shiba adorn the NASCAR of Josh Wise at the Talledega speedway, after the community chipped in $55,000-worth of DOGE to pay for the sponsorship.
This was after it had raised the same for Jamaican bobsled team to help send the to the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi. Wow – as the meme might say – much generosity!
Fast forward to 2018, and Dogecoin is again hitting the headlines, as it’s price has exploded in the past few weeks, almost tripling in value against the dollar, and taking it into the Top 20 coins according to CryptoCompare.
That price move seemed to have been driven by talk about Dogethereum, a bridging system that would allow interoperability between the Dogecoin and Ethereum blockchains.
A successful test for that was completed on September 5th.
Doge/Ethereum bridge test live on Youtube – starting in 90 Minutes: https://t.co/KXmEDklcru | #Dogethereum #Dogecoin #DOGE #ethereum #ETH
— #hashtagnochmal (@hashtagnochmal) September 5, 2018
While that project is undoubtedly interesting, and has rightly seen interest in Dogecoin increase a lot. Jackson Palmer remains unconvinced that it’s the real reason behind DOGE’s spike.
I’d wager it’s market manipulation of some sort, given the software still hasn’t been updated in over 2+ years, that signs point to most of the money supply existing on centralized exchanges and that adoption has not increased in recent times outside of speculative trading.
— Jackson Palmer (@ummjackson) September 10, 2018
He even pointed his Twitter followers, and advocates of Dogecoin, to a piece he wrote in January that contained this stark warning:
“As I quickly learned, a passionate community of people throwing around money is like blood in the water to the shark-like scammers and opportunists who, in late 2014, co-opted the Dogecoin community and fleeced its members for millions of dollars.”
I stick by my January op-ed on @motherboard, just slightly refocusing the blame in this quote on Robinhood and newly introduced USDT pairs.https://t.co/U1oIYxxcH3 pic.twitter.com/Gv0K1FzmOn
— Jackson Palmer (@ummjackson) September 10, 2018
Indeed, as that tweet hints, on several occasions, Palmer has pointed to crypto exchange Robinhood – and new pairings of Doge with USDT – as being behind the boost in its price, as the subject of manipulation by traders.
I honestly blame Robinhood for most of this.
— Jackson Palmer (@ummjackson) September 11, 2018
Also attracting Palmer’s ire has been the wider crypto pump-and-dump culture of crypto, which takes low-level stocks and inflates their value using well-known techniques perfected in so-called ‘Boiler Room’ stock selling scams.
Coordinated market manipulation and pumping via social channels from people who stand to profit off a stream of uneducated investors. There are people who do this as a job in crypto, and Dogecoin is just their current medium. It’ll be some other random alt in a few weeks.
— Jackson Palmer (@ummjackson) September 10, 2018
While he has previously expressed his frustration with the crypto market thus:
The sad truth is that nobody cares. Crypto is penny stocks at this point.
— Jackson Palmer (@ummjackson) September 10, 2018
While it’s undoubtedly true that Dogecoin holds a place of great affection in the eyes of many involved in crypto – it’s don’t give a damn, 1Doge = 1Doge worldview is hard not to fall in love with on some level – there does appear to be correction coming in terms of its valuation. Nobody can accuse Jackson Palmer of not trying to warn people, should it happen, however.
Not as mad as these people will be when they lose their money and realize they were swindled by market manipulators.
— Jackson Palmer (@ummjackson) September 11, 2018