This Week on Crypto Twitter: Elon Musk and Dogecoin Co-Creator Jackson Palmer Exchange Words

The two most striking conversations this week on the world’s largest microblogging platform were Elon Musk’s beef with Dogecoin co-creator Jackson Palmer, and Ethereum creator Vitalik Buterin’s musings on a letter sent to Washington by crypto skeptics.

On Monday, Australian news outlet Crikey published an interview with Palmer, who was promoting his new podcast, Griftonomics, when he laid into the crypto industry.

“I wish it was the end of crypto, but it’s not,” Palmer said, before turning his thoughts to Musk: “He’s a grifter. He sells a vision in hopes that he can one day deliver what he’s promising, but he doesn’t know that. He’s just really good at pretending he knows.”

Palmer also said that he wrote a Python script that would automatically detect and report spam bots in a Twitter user’s mentions. The Dogecoin-loving Musk allegedly reached out to Palmer and asked for the script, but, according to Palmer: “It became apparent very quickly that he didn’t understand coding as well as he made out. He asked, ‘How do I run this Python script?'”

The Tesla CEO responded by saying his children wrote better code than Palmer. Musk also called Palmer “a tool.”

Palmer didn’t reply directly to Musk’s provocations, but he defended his spambot catcher in a subsequent mini-thread.

On Wednesday, the Financial Times reported that a letter signed by 26 anti-crypto computer scientists, tech bloggers, and academics, including many former FAANG employees, had been presented to U.S. lawmakers.

The letter urges regulators to “take a critical, skeptical approach toward industry claims that crypto-assets are an innovative technology that is unreservedly good,” and it asked them to “resist pressure from digital asset industry financiers, lobbyists, and boosters.”

Ethereum creator Vitalik Buterin appeared to respond to the letter in a tweet thread on Friday.

Buterin also stated that crypto fans were upset and confused that British-Canadian tech blogger Cory Doctorow was a signatory to the letter, because they’d considered him an ally. In 2018, Doctorow delivered a keynote speech called “Decentralize, Democratize, or Die” at DevCon, the annual Ethereum developer conference.

Buterin also mentioned that he’s unhappy with the amount of infighting in the crypto community. He suggested it was a byproduct of success, because as businesses scale up they find themselves in more direct competition with each other.

Elsewhere

Lachlan Markay of Axios provided a pithy account of how Rep. Madison Cawthorn (R-SC), who’s being investigated by the House Committee on Ethics for an alleged pump-and-dump scheme involving the “Let’s Go Brandon” coin, spent the last 10 days of 2021.

On Thursday, branded NFT creator Nifty’s announced a major partnership with Warner Bros.

Also that day, blockchain sleuth ZachXBT wrote a lengthy thread about Animoon, an NFT scam that couldn’t be more blatant to anyone even dimly aware of recent pop culture.

Barry Silbert, founder of the Digital Currency Group (which includes crypto asset management giant Grayscale), took issue with a proposal by the New York State Senate to impose a two-year moratorium on all fossil fuel-powered proof-of-work crypto mining, calling it a “job killer.”

But State Senate Bill S6486D passed 36-27 on Friday morning. It’s now headed to the desk of Gov. Kathy Hochul, who gets 10 days to sign it into law or veto it.

Coinbase, in the wake of a Q1 loss of $430 million, announced on Thursday it would not only be freezing hiring, it also would be rescinding offers recently accepted by candidates. Recruitment company Blind tweeted a job offer letter, which promised recipients the company wouldn’t be rescinding offers, alongside an email doing exactly the opposite.

And finally, Kanye West has decided that it is indeed time to ask him about NFTs.

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