Elon Musk Fires Back at Dogecoin Co-Creator Over 'Grifter' Claims

Tesla and SpaceX chief Elon Musk took to Twitter to respond to Dogecoin creator Jackson Palmer’s claims that Musk struggles with computer programming, saying that even his kids "wrote better code when they were 12" than Palmer.

In an interview with the Australian news site Crikey earlier this week, Palmer said he had messaged Musk on Twitter several years ago after creating a bot that would detect crypto scams on Twitter and automatically report them to the platform.

According to Palmer, during the exchange Musk asked how to run the Python script, which led him to the conclusion that the Tesla boss "didn't understand coding as well as he made out."

“He’s a grifter, he sells a vision in hopes that he can one day deliver what he’s promising, but he doesn’t know that. He’s just really good at pretending he knows,” said Palmer. “My opinion on him and all billionaires is that I don’t care much for them.”

Yesterday, Musk clapped back and didn’t spare words for the Australian programmer either.

“My kids wrote better code when they were 12 than the nonsense script Jackson sent me," wrote Musk. “Like I said, if it’s so great, he should share it with the world and make everyone’s experience with Twitter better. If he does, you will see what I mean.”

Musk continued, indicating that he does possess some coding knowledge. When asked by one of the commentators what is the best language to write code, Musk said that Python would best suit AI and most other things, while JavaScript would be best for “web stuff.”

“For high performance or tight code, C/C++, spiced up with some assembly,” added Musk.

Dogecoin, crypto and coding

Palmer, meanwhile, reminded that he shared the code for his anti-phishing bot, which was published back in 2018 on GitHub. He suggested though, that the code wouldn’t be as effective today since scammers have “evolved their tactics” over the years.

“I never said it was super complex, but this simple script definitely worked in catching and reporting the less sophisticated phishing accounts circa 2018... They've since evolved their tactics,” wrote Palmer.

He added that he shared the code with a lot of people, and it worked for them.

Musk didn't stop there though, questioning the Dogecoin creator's involvement with the meme cryptocurrency he’s been promoting time and again.

"Palmer always forgets to mention that he never wrote a single line of Dogecoin code," wrote Musk.

Dogecoin was created by software engineers Jackson Palmer and Billy Markus in 2013 as a joke cryptocurrency based on the popular internet meme of a Shiba Inu dog.

The meme cryptocurrency gained prominence after Elon Musk endorsed it in a series of tweets last year. The Tesla boss was even touted as the self-proclaimed Doge father, and his tweets had quite a significant impact on Dogecoin’s price movements, taking the cryptocurrency to an all-time high of $0.67 in May 2021.