Dogecoin’s Co-Founder Denounces The Industry, Compares Crypto to A Pyramid Scheme

Since its origin as a joke in 2013, Dogecoin has found itself a rising, memetic star in the world of cryptocurrency. Boasting the undying love of Elon Musk and a market cap of an estimated $54 billion dollars, surpassing several well-established companies including Philips, eBay, Ferrari, and even Twitter, according to a recent report from Forbes, Doge has become a crypto staple, revered by some finance enthusiasts.

Yet even with this astounding success and the unwavering support of the Tesla CEO, who has been known to send stock prices skyrocketing with a single tweet, not everyone is feeling “very wow” about the crypto. Earlier this week, one tech icon took to social media to speak out against the meme-tastic currency and boldly compare crypto as a whole to a Ponzi scheme – the co-founder of Dogecoin himself, Jackson Palmer. His thesis? Rich people ruin everything, even the crypto he helped invent.

“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,” wrote Palmer on Wednesday as a part of a broader thread dissecting why he would not be returning to crypto. 

Part of this problem, he argues, is because the industry is full of rich people and is “controlled by a powerful cartel of wealthy figures,” as Palmer calls them. Despite claiming crypto is decentralized, he asserts, these wealthy people “have evolved to incorporate many of the same institutions tied to the existing centralized financial system they supposedly set out to replace.”

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“The cryptocurrency industry leverages a network of shady business connections, bought influencers and pay-for-play media outlets to perpetuate a cult-like ‘get rich quick’ funnel designed to extract new money from the financially desperate and naive,” he elaborated in a later post. While he acknowledged that these types of financial dealings have existed for quite some time, he says that cryptocurrency is different, as it “is almost purpose [sic] built to make the funnel of profiteering more efficient for those at the top and less safeguarded for the vulnerable.”

“Cryptocurrency is like taking the worst parts of today’s capitalist system (eg. corruption, fraud, inequality) and using software to technically limit the use of interventions (eg. audits, regulation, taxation) which serve as protections or safety nets for the average person,” he continued.