The co-creator of popular meme token Dogecoin (DOGE) says a lack of traditional oversight leaves crypto traders vulnerable to being fleeced.
In a new interview with Australian media outlet The Project TV, Jackson Palmer, who along with Billy Markus developed Dogecoin in 2013 as a joke, says cryptocurrencies are speculative in nature because they derive value from other people rather than their actual utility.
“Cryptocurrency at its core is just a digital currency. The only reason that it has value is because people think it does.
It is very much a purely speculative market. It doesn’t really provide anything back to society. You can’t really pay your rent with it. You can’t buy your groceries with it, necessarily.
It’s a little bit like an online casino. Those are kind of the digital chips.”
Palmer goes on to share his belief that the digital asset ecosystem is like a house of cards.
“The best way I think about it is that you’re buying a receipt essentially that says you bought it. That’s about it.
Other people in the world will honor that receipt. I think it’s a little bit of a house of cards, personally.”
The DOGE co-founder concludes by stating crypto assets are not inherently a scam but enable malfeasance due to the lack of government oversight and regulation that would protect ordinary consumers.
“I actually don’t think that cryptocurrency itself is a scam. What it is, is a facilitator of scams because it is this thing that exists outside of the controls of governments. Because it is this irreversible transaction.
It really has provided a means for scammers to come in and do all of this stuff without all that pesky government oversight. They can’t get caught as easily.”
Last year, Palmer sparked a viral tweetstorm criticizing digital assets and referring to mantras of decentralization and sound money as “facades” and “get-rich-quick schemes” that wealthy people use to lure financially desperate individuals into traps and avoid taxes.
More recently, he warned that a crypto winter was coming despite the massive devaluation that has already taken place across all assets in the space.
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