Elon Musk Responds to Dogecoin Co-Creator Calling Him a 'Grifter' Who Is 'Good at Pretending'

Pascal Le Segretain/Getty Elon Musk

Elon Musk and the co-creator of Dogecoin are at odds.

The public feud began when Jackson Palmer, a co-creator of the popular cryptocurrency, criticized Musk in an interview published this week by the Australian outlet Crikey.

"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," Palmer said in part, according to Crikey. "He's just really good at pretending he knows. That's very evident with the Tesla full-self-driving promise."

Palmer pointed to a time when the two were in contact about one of Palmer's projects.

"Ah, it's funny, I have an interesting past with Elon," Palmer said, per Crikey. "The first time I messaged him on Twitter years ago, I had written a bot, a script that would automatically detect if there was a cryptocurrency scam in your Twitter mentions and would automatically report them to the platform. I worked with [Twitter co-founder and former CEO] Jack and his product management team so that when these reports were submitted they'd get them instantly."

"I gave it to other crypto influencers," Palmer continued, according to Crikey. "Elon reached out to me to get hold of that script and 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?'"

David Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty

Parker wasn't impressed: "After I gave him the script, I wasn't a fan of him," he told Crikey.

Musk has often tweeted about his love of Dogecoin and recently announced that his company SpaceX would accept the currency as payment for merchandise. But the billionaire entrepreneur, 50, did not hold back in his response to Palmer's interview and criticized the computer code Palmer previously sent him.

"My kids write better code when they were 12 than the nonsense script Jackson sent me," Musk tweeted Tuesday.

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"If it's so great, he should share it with the world and make everyone's experience with Twitter better," Musk added. "If he does, you will see what I mean. Jackson Palmer is a tool."

PEOPLE reached out to Musk's representatives and Tesla for comment.

In response to Musk's comment, Jackson posted a link to a Github page featuring the code he published in 2018.

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"I never said it was super complex, but this simple script definitely worked in catching and reporting the less sophisticated phishing accounts circa 2018," Jackson said in a tweet. "They've since evolved their tactics. I shared it with a lot of people, and it worked for them."

Musk then replied directly to Jackson, calling the code "completely useless" in a tweet.

According to CNBC, Palmer and his friend, Billy Markus, created Dogecoin as a joke in 2013. Jackson left the project in 2015 and has not profited during its recent success.

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In April, Musk announced he had purchased a $44 billion stake in Twitter, and planned to reverse the permanent ban against former President Donald Trump that was put in place following the riots at the U.S. Capitol, along with other changes.

But the deal was put on hold pending details on fake and spam accounts on the platform, Musk said earlier this month.