Co-creator of Dogecoin lashes out at ‘self-absorbed grifter’ Elon Musk over bitcoin stand

Jackson Palmer helped create the cryptocurrency as a joke in 2013

One of Dogecoin’s co-creators labelled Elon Musk a “self-absorbed grifter” after Tesla stopped taking bitcoin for its electric cars.

Jackson Palmer hit out at the billionaire entrepreneur, who has nicknamed himself The Dogefather, in a now deleted string of tweets.

“Reminder: Elon Musk is and always will be a self-absorbed grifter,” tweeted Mr Palmer, an Australian who created Dogecoin in 2013 with American Billy Markus.

He followed up his shot at Mr Musk with a tweet that reportedly read “removing this in 1 min as that’s all I have to say and I enjoy the quiet life.”

He then took a swipe at Mr Musk’s hosting of Saturday Night Live in a third tweet that read, “ps. SNL episode was cringe, bro.”

The value of Dogecoin plummeted sharply after Mr Musk talked about it on the late-night comedy show and called it a “hustle” in one sketch.

He helped Dogecoin recover some of tis value when he tweeted earlier this week, “Working with Doge devs to improve system transaction efficiency. Potentially promising.”

The Tesla boss went on to crash the whole cryptocurrency market earlier this week when he said the company would no longer accept Bitcoin, because of environmental concerns about the way it is mined.

Mr Palmer said in 2018 that creating Dogecoin was a “p*** take” to make fun of the alt-coins that were being released onto the cryptocurrency market.

And he gave all his Dogecoin away to charity when he left it.

“Back in the day, I had a few million Dogecoin, which was nothing. It was like five or ten grand’s worth. And I gave it all away to charities that we were supporting early on,” he previously said.

“I thought … how long can it last? I was about a month into it and I thought dogecoin can last maybe a couple of months; people aren’t going to remember it anymore in a year, why would I hold onto it? So, sadly, I have no dogecoin.

“Unlike most people who have created cryptocurrencies, I’m not some baller getting around in a Ferrari.

“The joke is on me, firmly. That being said I feel like I’d be a bit of a hypocrite if I was like some rich crypto guy off the back of a joke that was me poking fun at crypto.”