Dogecoin with Jackson Palmer

Dogecoin was started in 2013 as a joke. Jackson Palmer forked Bitcoin and created his cryptocurrency as a play-off of the “doge” meme. The currency became popular as a means of Reddit users “tipping” each other. If I made a comment on Reddit that you liked, you might send me some Dogecoin. This use case allowed people to share the idea of Dogecoin virally, and Dogecoin became valuable, even though the currency did not have any technical properties that made it significantly different than Bitcoin.

As Dogecoin was becoming popular, an experienced Internet scam artist took notice and started a Dogecoin exchange called Moolah. Moolah was used to steal money from its customers and investors, and the CEO was arrested.

Jackson Palmer was not involved in this scheme, but it soured his feelings about Dogecoin and the entire Bitcoin space. His coin, which had been created as a joke, had been repurposed as a weapon to steal money.

Jackson left the Dogecoin community in 2015 to focus on other things. But as Bitcoin entered the mainstream conversation, Jackson has been pulled back into the world of cryptocurrency. Jackson’s YouTube channel has over 20,000 subscribers, who tune in to learn about consensus protocols, new tokens, and cryptocurrency news.

In today’s episode, Jackson and I discuss his experiences with Dogecoin, and how that compares with the scams around low-quality ICOs that are pulling in retail investors today. We also discuss more positive things–such as proof-of-stake and newer consensus protocols.

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Transcript

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