The co-creator of a popular meme currency Dogecoin has launched an attack on cryptocurrency, saying it has the “worst parts of today’s capitalist system.”

Jackson Palmer, who founded Dogecoin in 2013 together with Billy Markus before selling all his holdings, explained in a Wednesday Twitter thread why he wants nothing more to do with the crypto world.

“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 continued:

“Despite claims of ‘decentralization’, the cryptocurrency industry is controlled by a powerful cartel of wealthy figures who, with time, have evolved to incorporate many of the same institutions tied to the existing centralized financial system they supposedly set out to replace.”

“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.”

It’s quite a statement from a man who helped launch the eighth-biggest cryptocurrency, although the coin was meant as a joke to begin with.

After a 6,000% rise in the past year alone, Dogecoin now has a market cap of $26 billion. The coin, based on a popular internet dog meme and intended to poke fun at Bitcoin knockoffs, has gained a cult following from those who want to get rich, others who think it is a light-hearted alternative to the sometimes serious world of Bitcoin and Ethereum, and for those who missed the train on the two largest coins.

Palmer is not joking about Dogecoin or wider crypto market anymore.

Jackson has criticized cryptocurrency’s use of “shady business connections” to suck money out of “the financially desperate and naive.” This is because people buy into a cult where they think they can get rich quick, he argued.

Jackson concluded that he would no longer engage in public discussion about cryptocurrency. According to him, event “modest critique” of the crypto world is not possible because of the fanaticism of its followers – the super rich or retail investors who think they will one day be super rich.

Echoes of that critique sound through Dogecoin’s own success, which is largely pinned on one of the world’s richest men, Tesla CEO Elon Musk, pumping the coin’s price on Twitter, whether that is his intention or not.

The eccentric billionaire – known for his Twitter outbursts – has claimed Dogecoin his favorite crypto, causing its price to go through the roof.

Co-billionaire Mark Cuban is also a proponent of DOGE.

Nic Carter of blockchain-focused VC firm Castle Island Ventures condemned Palmer’s tweets.

This isn’t the first time Palmer has criticized the crypto world or the coin he helped create. In 2015, Palmer bowed out of Dogecoin and the wider crypto world, calling its ecosystem “toxic.” In 2018, he said that Bitcoin had become a “little cult-like” and that the technology had yet to add very much value to society:

“What it really is, is a re-centralization of some of the stuff that bitcoin was trying to decentralize, right? If we get to a point where the money distribution in Bitcoin looks fairly identical to that of the traditional Wall St. banks, then what have we really achieved?”

Source: Dogecoin Co-Creator Palmer: Crypto Feeds on 'Financially Desperate and Naive' – Fintechs.fi