Dogecoin Creator Claims Mark Cuban Is Running a Crypto ‘Grift’

• Dogecoin co-creator Jackson Palmer said he feels big investors are running a crypto “grift”.
• Palmer originally created Dogecoin as part of a countercultural movement against Wall Street.
• Mark Cuban told Insider that Palmer’s move is nothing he hasn’t heard before.

Dogecoin co-creator Jackson Palmer had some harsh words for crypto enthusiasts like Mark Cuban.

In an interview with Insider, Palmer said Cuban appears to have “drank the Kool-Aid” when it comes to crypto and NFTs.

“Mark Cuban is not getting paid as a celebrity to promote this,” Palmer said. “He’s actually been indoctrinated to believe that these things are the future.”

The Adobe engineer accused Cuban and other major investors in and promoters of crypto – including billionaire Marc Andreessen and investor Chris Dixon – of running a “grift”.

“They actively see it as an ongoing way to extract profit. It’s not like they’ve been paid once to promote something – it’s that they want to be the ones in control or have ownership or a large stake in this type of mining cryptocurrency system,” Palmer asserted.

Cuban denied Palmer’s allegations in a statement to Insider. “Sounds like the same thing that’s been said about every new technology I’ve been involved with,” he said.

Andreessen and Dixon did not respond to a request for comment from Insider prior to publication.

Still, in August Dixon, who heads the crypto fund at Andreessen Horowitz, said he sees digital currencies as a way to shift power away from big tech. The fund, which was co-founded by Andreessen, has invested in more than 50 crypto startups. Meanwhile, Andreessen has called crypto skeptics like Palmer an “incredible gift” to his firm in the past.

Earlier this year, Cuban said that 80% of his current investments not on the ABC show “Shark Tank” are related to crypto. Despite helping to create Dogecoin — which peaked in 2021 and currently has a market cap of $7.84 billion — Palmer has said he hasn’t made a penny from the digital currency, he told crypto blog Decrypt in 2018. He told Insider that he has always seen crypto as more of a “hobby”.

Palmer also commented on the role celebrities like Matt Damon and Kim Kardashian have taken in advertising crypto to the masses. Although he said he sees the role of actors and artists in the crypto scheme as more transactional and less of a “grift”.

“They’re promoting what they’re being paid to promote,” Palmer said. “I think actors don’t have a moral compass when it comes to that, but that’s their job. That’s what they do. It’s not surprising to me.”

In June, Damon was mocked online as the value of cryptocurrencies fell. People took to social media to slam the actor for his Superbowl ad with Crypto.com that told viewers “Fortune favors the brave” just months before cryptocurrencies lost more than $2 trillion in value.

The co-creator of the meme currency has long held a cynical view of crypto, as more and more traditional financial types have embraced what was once an alternative to the mainstream financial system.

“Back in 2013 — or even when crypto first came out in 2008 — it was part of what was actually a response to Wall Street and the overall capitalist system,” Palmer said.

“What really struck me was that I quickly realized that the people who built these systems—who built Bitcoin and built all these cryptocurrencies—didn’t necessarily want to replace a corrupt capitalist system. They wanted more to be the ones in control of an alternative capitalist system The gripe for most people in crypto is not that Wall Street bankers were exploitative or had unfair power, it’s that they want to be the unfair power in the system and they want to be the ones able to extract big profits from people instead of Wall Street bankers,” he added.

Read the full interview with Palmer here.