News of Elon Musk's bid to buy Twitter has the tech and crypto worlds in an uproar, many viewing it as a move for free speech, with others seeing it as a billionaire taking over the (company-run) public square.
Someone not impressed with the Tesla CEO's plans for Twitter is the co-creator of Musk's favorite cryptocurrency, Dogecoin.
"It takes some pretty impressive mental gymnastics to associate any type of 'freedom' with the richest man in the world initiating a hostile takeover and forcing one of the largest public social media platforms private," Jackson Palmer tweeted.
It takes some pretty impressive mental gymnastics to associate any type of "freedom" with the richest man in the world initiating a hostile takeover and forcing one of the largest public social media platforms private.
— Jackson Palmer (@ummjackson) April 14, 2022
Since April 2019, Musk has been one of Dogecoin's most vocal cheerleaders, his tweets moving the needle on Dogecoin's price several times. Dogecoin hit an all-time high of $0.73 on May 8, 2021; the same day Musk hosted “Saturday Night Live.” (It then sank to $0.43 overnight.)
But with all Musk has done to pump the price of Dogecoin, it's notable that one of Dogecoin's creators would come out against his bid to take Twitter private—but perhaps not surprising considering Palmer has been critical of cryptocurrency and its supporters for some time.
In a Twitter thread posted on July 14, 2021, Palmer voiced his opinion on the industry.
"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 wrote.
Palmer went on to say he believes the cryptocurrency market is controlled by "a powerful cartel of wealthy figures" and that it makes funneling profit to those at the top more efficient. Palmer says he will never return to cryptocurrency.
Jackson Palmer and Billy Markus launched Dogecoin in 2013 as a joke, poking fun at the nascent crypto industry by using the Shiba Inu "doge" meme. Since then, the original meme coin has amassed a massive following online and become the eleventh-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization at $19.06 billion. Worth less than a penny for most of its history, it currently trades at $0.14, according to CoinMarketCap.com.