Aussie Dogecoin Creator: ‘I Wish It Was the End of Crypto’

Australian-born Dogecoin co-creator Jackson Palmer has renewed his trenchant criticism of the cryptocurrency industry in an interview to promote his new podcast.

“Increasingly people are doing nothing but making money off doing nothing, it’s kind of f..ked us all up,” Palmer told Cameron Wilsson of Australian online publication Crikey this week. “I wish it was the end of crypto, but it’s not.”

Investors ‘Yet to Learn Their Lesson’

Spruiking his new podcast, Griftonomics – its very title an oblique reference to Palmer’s stance on digital assets – the former crypto evangelist said he thought the industry would have imploded by now and that “people would learn their lesson”.

But increasingly, in the past six months, I’ve seen a continued perseverance. You see these big people with big money getting involved and that means it’s not slowing down.

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Jackson Palmer, Dogecoin co-creator, former crypto YouTuber, now podcaster

Send in the Clowns

Palmer wrote off ICOs, DAOs and NFTs as “scams” and denigrated Initial Game Offerings (IGOs) as the industry’s “latest swindle”. Yet he also played down the idea of an imminent crypto winter, saying: “I still see heaps of money being funnelled in by crypto promoters. They’re waiting for a fresh batch of fools to come in. This happens in cycles.”

Publicist Deserves a Raise

Whoever is acting as Palmer’s publicist is clearly not being paid enough, as the newly minted podcaster also popped up on ABC-TV’s Four Corners current affairs show this week, joining a chorus of critics on an episode focusing on cryptocurrency.

“The future crypto offers is more dystopian than utopian,” Palmer was quoted as saying, as past tweets of his were offered as supporting evidence, including this old chestnut: “Despite claims of decentralisation, the cryptocurrency industry is controlled by a powerful cartel of wealthy figures.”

Palmer’s bitter Twitter tirade against his former crypto project began soon after he walked away from Dogecoin in 2015, reaching a vitriolic peak in his personal crypto winter last year:

Perhaps Palmer was right to abandon his memecoin when he did. Just weeks ago, Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev was mercilessly mocked for asserting that Dogecoin could become the native currency of the internet. This after the brokerage’s Q3 2021 crypto revenue had declined by 78 percent, largely due to Dogecoin.