Originally published 2021-05-18.
In May 2021, Jackson Palmer, one of the two people who created Dogecoin, broke years of near silence to post a short verdict on Elon Musk: "Reminder: Elon Musk is and always will be a self-absorbed grifter." The tweet came days after Musk hosted Saturday Night Live, where a sketch called the coin "a hustle", and as Dogecoin's price was swinging wildly on Musk's every word.
Palmer soon deleted the posts, but the episode captured a real tension: the man most associated with Dogecoin was not one of its founders, and one of its founders wanted nothing to do with the hype around it.
What Palmer said and when
According to Futurism, citing Insider, Palmer's tweet appeared on a Thursday in mid-May 2021, the day after Musk announced that Tesla would stop accepting Bitcoin for car purchases. He followed it with a second, even shorter judgement: Musk's "SNL episode was cringe, bro."
For many crypto fans this was a surprise. Palmer had kept a low profile for years and rarely commented on the coin's rise. The jab was widely shared, including by accounts that treated it as a perfectly timed strike from a mysterious founder.
Jackson Palmer, hidden for years,
— notsofast (@notsofast) May 14, 2021
steps out from the shadows
executes a headshot with brutal precision
and fades back in 🙌 pic.twitter.com/JWJErWmPeV
(This post is no longer available on X.)
Shortly afterwards Palmer's Twitter account was emptied and described on his personal website as "parked". There he explained his distance from the whole scene, writing that "I have not been involved with the Dogecoin project or the cryptocurrency space in many years."
Musk, SNL and the "hustle" moment
Musk hosted Saturday Night Live on 8 May 2021. Fans had hoped the broadcast would push Dogecoin "to the moon"; instead, in a Weekend Update sketch, Musk played a financial expert who, when pressed to explain what Dogecoin was, finally admitted it was a hustle. The joke landed badly with investors. According to Wikipedia's Dogecoin entry, the coin's price fell by as much as 29.5% during the broadcast.
Musk had spent months promoting the coin with memes and tweets and liked to call himself the "Dogefather". His posts often moved the price within minutes, which led critics to argue that a single billionaire had far too much influence over a supposedly decentralised asset. On the show he also said he has Asperger's syndrome, a remark that drew wide attention.
Futurism reported that Musk's personal fortune dropped by roughly $20 billion in the days after his SNL appearance, a figure based on swings in Tesla's share price rather than any loss on Dogecoin itself.
Where Dogecoin came from
Dogecoin was launched in December 2013 by software engineers Billy Markus and Jackson Palmer as a light-hearted joke about the speculative frenzy around cryptocurrencies. Its mascot is the Shiba Inu from the "Doge" meme.
Technically, Markus built it from the code of Luckycoin and Litecoin, so it uses the Scrypt proof-of-work algorithm rather than Bitcoin's SHA-256. The biggest difference for investors is supply: Bitcoin is capped at 21 million coins, while Dogecoin has no cap, and around 5 billion new coins are added every year.
The joke became serious money in early 2021. The coin's price rose by thousands of percent in a few months, first passing $0.50 on 4 May 2021, and its total market value briefly topped $85 billion the following day, just before the SNL broadcast.
Tesla, Bitcoin and energy use
Musk's influence went beyond Dogecoin. In February 2021, Tesla disclosed that it had bought $1.5 billion worth of Bitcoin and would accept it as payment for cars. Within weeks the company was reporting gains from those holdings in its quarterly results.
On 12 May 2021, Musk reversed course and said Tesla would suspend Bitcoin payments because of the fossil fuel used to mine it. Estimates at the time, such as the Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index, put Bitcoin's annual electricity use on a par with mid-sized countries. It was this announcement, and the market turmoil that followed, that formed the backdrop to Palmer's tweet.
Why Palmer turned against crypto
Palmer later explained his view at more length. In July 2021 he said he would not return to cryptocurrency, describing it as an industry built to benefit its wealthiest promoters through tax avoidance, reduced regulation and artificial scarcity. That position explains the edge in his May tweet: he saw Musk not as a fan of his creation but as a powerful player using it.
His co-founder Billy Markus has taken a friendlier tone toward Musk over the years, which is a useful reminder that "the creator of Dogecoin" can mean two quite different people.
What happened next
The coin's link to Musk did not end there. In December 2021, Tesla began accepting Dogecoin for some merchandise. In June 2022 an investor filed a $258 billion lawsuit accusing Musk of running a pyramid scheme around the coin; a federal judge dismissed the case in 2024. Later that year, the US "Department of Government Efficiency" led by Musk took an acronym that echoed the coin's name, and the price jumped again.
For anyone thinking of buying a meme coin, the 2021 episode offers simple lessons. Prices can move on a single celebrity post. There is no company or cash flow behind the asset, and even the people who invented it may warn you away. Only risk money you can afford to lose.
Sources: Futurism: Dogecoin creator calls Elon Musk a self-absorbed grifter; Wikipedia: Dogecoin; Jackson Palmer's website.
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