KEY POINTS

  • Musk calls Markus humble and says he has a sense of humor
  • Tesla CEO is not fond of the other Dogecoin creator Jackson Palmer
  • Markus and Palmer no longer associated with Dogecoin

Tesla CEO has no beef with his favorite crypto asset, Dogecoin, despite his dispute with one of its creators, Jackson Palmer. Amid the scornful exchange with the Australian developer, Musk found time to appreciate and praise Billy Markus, one of the creators of the world's first-ever dog-themed meme coin.

"You’re humble, bro. Billy’s sense of humor & irreverence is a big part of why people love Dogecoin," Musk told Markus who uses the Twitter handle Shibetoshi Nakamoto on the social micro-blogging site.

The billionaire's praise came after Markus revealed that he copied the more significant part of the DOGE code from other cryptocurrencies and only wrote 20 lines.

Elon Musk has won huge praise for revolutionising the car and space industries but also drawn flak for his outbursts on Twitter
Elon Musk has won huge praise for revolutionizing the car and space industries but also drawn flak for his outbursts on Twitter. AFP/Angela Weiss

Musk reacted to allegations Palmer made in an interview with an Australian site Crikey where the latter called the business magnate names like "grifter" and said the billionaire "didn't understand coding," and was "really good at pretending he knows."

Musk called Palmer a "tool" and his code "a lame snippet of Python," adding that his "kids wrote better code when they were 12 than the nonsense script Jackson sent."

The Tesla CEO challenged Palmer and said, "if it’s so great, he should share it with the world and make everyone’s experience with Twitter better. If he does, you will see what I mean." The Palmer took up the challenge and shared a Github link to the code he created in 2018 to combat bot activities on Twitter.

Markus and Palmer created Dogecoin as a joke to make fun of the speculation running wild about cryptocurrency at the time. The digital asset is considered the first meme coin and dog-themed altcoin in the cryptocurrency world.

Both of them are no longer connected to DOGE. Palmer left the cryptocurrency industry in 2015 and said he has no plans of returning. Markus sold all his Dogecoin in 2015 after he was laid off.

DOGE was trading down 5.92% at $0.08054 with a 24-hour volume of $797,319,505 as of 1:27 a.m. ET on Thursday, based on data from cryptocurrency aggregator CoinMarketCap.

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