8 ms·

The man who dodged the Dogecoin

59 points by pretfood 8y ago

ThetaOneOne 8y ago
That’s a vastly different title to the headline and I think misinterprets it.
- sctb 8y ago
  We've reverted it to the original from “The man behind Dogecoin regrets nothing”, but we'd be happy to change it to something more informative if someone can suggest such a phrase from the article.
  - nrclark 8y ago
    "The man who doged the Dogecoin"
skybrian 8y ago
I thought this was a great joke and hung out in the Reddit for a while. It got tedious, and some people seemed to be taking it alarmingly seriously, so I stopped. I think the lesson is that jokes wear off quickly and anything money-like hooks people the same way.
eiieirurjdndjd 8y ago
“Despite retail investors losing millions” hrm? Nobody has been losing millions lately.
jondubois 8y ago
The fact that cryptocurrencies have managed to grow and hold their value for so long is in itself proof that the financial system is not working. A huge chunk of the new money that the Fed is injecting into the system is going straight into the financial sector and some of it is going directly into cryptocurrencies. People have started to figure out that hard work doesn't pay. To earn money, you just need to get close to the massive stream of money that the Fed is constantly dumping into the economy. The whole financial system is an over-engineered mess; packed with technical debt and vulnerabilities. If it was a software system, it would have been rewritten decades ago.
- greymeister 8y ago
  > If it was a software system, it would have been rewritten decades ago. Like all of the software that runs power plants, defense systems, medical records? You make a good point, accidentally, that no, in fact most systems that become large and complex aren't re-written.
- TomVDB 8y ago
  > The fact that cryptocurrencies have managed to grow and hold their value for so long is in itself proof that the financial system is not working. The market cap of all stock markets is on the order of $100T. Total bond market cap is of similar scale. The total market cap of cryptocurrencies is $200B (and shrinking). Cryptocurrencies could be 10 bigger than what they are today and they'd still be a rounding error compared to the overall financial markets. The only thing proven by cryptocurrencies is that, at a global scale, the long tail provides enough opportunities for niches to exist.
  - panarky 8y ago
    > enough opportunities for niches to exist Exactly. How many times have you heard the argument that cryptocurrencies will never completely replace national currencies, so they should be worthless? Or that because it's harder to buy a coffee with Bitcoin than Euros, that Bitcoin is a fraud. It's not either-or. It isn't all or nothing. Cryptocurrencies can co-exist with national currencies and do just fine.
- panarky 8y ago
  > you just need to get close to the massive stream of money that the Fed is constantly dumping I hear this all the time, as if the Fed creates money out of thin air and gives it directly to crony capitalists. But I never hear about the actual mechanism that's used. Since this story rarely gets specific enough to really understand what's going on, I tend to think it's a fairy tale. Can you describe how this massive money stream works? Do rich people check their bank balance and there are mystery billions from nowhere? And just how massive is massive? Are we talking billions of dollars a day or what?
hndamien 8y ago
Given that he isn't anonymous, claiming to have not profited is the wisest course of action whether true or not.
- umanwizard 8y ago
  What exactly about having made his money from cryptocurrency speculation makes him more at risk of kidnapping, robbery etc. than any other random rich person?
  - xur17 8y ago
    The higher likelihood to have cryptocurrency holdings.
  - hndamien 8y ago
    Greater liquidity, less traceability.
    - sneak 8y ago
      It is the irreversibility of the transaction, not the traceability. There is no way to un-send stolen funds.
jmcgough 8y ago
I had a friend involved in the community a few years back. Some of the stuff they did was pretty funny (like sponsoring a NASCAR car). However, the inner circle was basically a group of people in a chat room running pump and dump schemes with the currency.
tw1010 8y ago
Jesus christ is that flickering scroll thing distracting.
bredren 8y ago
I believe this man had a silent partner in creating doge, who also ended up holding nothing. Not mentioned here though.
- api 8y ago
  Was the partner a Shiba Inu?
- bradlys 8y ago
  That's the "Billy Markus". They're mentioned in the opening. And yes, he got nothing out of it.
- leoc 8y ago
  (Disclaimer: I'm not a shibe let alone a Dogecoin expert or insider, so all of this is just from casual observation. OTOH I do know one of the current devs http://coloringcrypto.com/index.php/2018/03/12/29-part-3-origin-of-dogecoin-not-so-much-a-joke-behind-the-scenes-with-dogecoin-dev-cor-team-ross-nicoll/ http://coloringcrypto.com/index.php/2018/03/12/29-part-3-ori... personally—he's on here as rnicoll—so I'm not unbiased either. On the third hand, I'm speaking for myself here, and what I say isn't co-ordinated with or approved by him or anyone else. And it sure as heck is not investment advice or a substitute for your own due diligence.) Are you thinking of Billy Markus? He's in the article. He's lower-profile than Jackson Palmer but his involvement is by no means a secret: https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/jp5x3d/dogecoins-founders-believe-in-the-power-of-meme-currencies https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/jp5x3d/dogecoins-... . It seems that Markus did all the actual initial software, having begun work on it before Palmer independently came up with the (rather brilliant) Dogecoin name and marketing strategy. (The other essential piece of journalism on the history of Dogecoin seems to be https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/78xqxb/the-guy-who-ruined-dogecoin https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/78xqxb/the-guy-wh... ) I'm a little skeptical about Palmer's ongoing Dogecoin apology tour. Partly that's because it looks like another marketing operation to me. That's not to say that what he's saying is simply insincere. But I do get the impression that when he saw the marketing opportunity to be the founder of a far-out, headline-generating cryptocurrency he seized on that; and now that he sees the opportunity to be the remorseful crypto-skeptic, delivering what-have-I-wrought confessions to a media that's mostly soured on cryptocash and is now highly receptive to that message, he's pouncing on that opportunity too. > When I asked about the recent Coinbase rumor, he answered, albeit hesitantly. “There’s no way of submitting all the legal documentation that Coinbase requires. It’s by no means likely that they’ll get it.” This does seem to be accurate https://www.reddit.com/r/dogecoin/comments/9j1yuf/dogecoin_doge_now_has_an_opportunity_to_list_on/e6omoj0/ https://www.reddit.com/r/dogecoin/comments/9j1yuf/dogecoin_d... https://twitter.com/langer_hans/status/1051943757715820545 https://twitter.com/langer_hans/status/1051943757715820545 but the reason why is hardly something that reflects only badly on Dogecoin. Evidently the Coinbase application process is designed for VC-funded startups, while Dogecoin is closer to a community-run open source project, led by people who have day jobs in tech and aren't gambling on a big ICO bonanza.

59 points by pretfood 8y ago

ThetaOneOne 8y ago

That’s a vastly different title to the headline and I think misinterprets it.

sctb 8y ago
We've reverted it to the original from “The man behind Dogecoin regrets nothing”, but we'd be happy to change it to something more informative if someone can suggest such a phrase from the article.
- nrclark 8y ago
  "The man who doged the Dogecoin"

skybrian 8y ago

I thought this was a great joke and hung out in the Reddit for a while. It got tedious, and some people seemed to be taking it alarmingly seriously, so I stopped. I think the lesson is that jokes wear off quickly and anything money-like hooks people the same way.

eiieirurjdndjd 8y ago

“Despite retail investors losing millions” hrm? Nobody has been losing millions lately.

jondubois 8y ago

The fact that cryptocurrencies have managed to grow and hold their value for so long is in itself proof that the financial system is not working. A huge chunk of the new money that the Fed is injecting into the system is going straight into the financial sector and some of it is going directly into cryptocurrencies. People have started to figure out that hard work doesn't pay. To earn money, you just need to get close to the massive stream of money that the Fed is constantly dumping into the economy. The whole financial system is an over-engineered mess; packed with technical debt and vulnerabilities. If it was a software system, it would have been rewritten decades ago.

greymeister 8y ago
> If it was a software system, it would have been rewritten decades ago. Like all of the software that runs power plants, defense systems, medical records? You make a good point, accidentally, that no, in fact most systems that become large and complex aren't re-written.
TomVDB 8y ago
> The fact that cryptocurrencies have managed to grow and hold their value for so long is in itself proof that the financial system is not working. The market cap of all stock markets is on the order of $100T. Total bond market cap is of similar scale. The total market cap of cryptocurrencies is $200B (and shrinking). Cryptocurrencies could be 10 bigger than what they are today and they'd still be a rounding error compared to the overall financial markets. The only thing proven by cryptocurrencies is that, at a global scale, the long tail provides enough opportunities for niches to exist.
- panarky 8y ago
  > enough opportunities for niches to exist Exactly. How many times have you heard the argument that cryptocurrencies will never completely replace national currencies, so they should be worthless? Or that because it's harder to buy a coffee with Bitcoin than Euros, that Bitcoin is a fraud. It's not either-or. It isn't all or nothing. Cryptocurrencies can co-exist with national currencies and do just fine.
panarky 8y ago
> you just need to get close to the massive stream of money that the Fed is constantly dumping I hear this all the time, as if the Fed creates money out of thin air and gives it directly to crony capitalists. But I never hear about the actual mechanism that's used. Since this story rarely gets specific enough to really understand what's going on, I tend to think it's a fairy tale. Can you describe how this massive money stream works? Do rich people check their bank balance and there are mystery billions from nowhere? And just how massive is massive? Are we talking billions of dollars a day or what?

hndamien 8y ago

Given that he isn't anonymous, claiming to have not profited is the wisest course of action whether true or not.

umanwizard 8y ago
What exactly about having made his money from cryptocurrency speculation makes him more at risk of kidnapping, robbery etc. than any other random rich person?
- xur17 8y ago
  The higher likelihood to have cryptocurrency holdings.
- hndamien 8y ago
  Greater liquidity, less traceability.
  - sneak 8y ago
    It is the irreversibility of the transaction, not the traceability. There is no way to un-send stolen funds.

jmcgough 8y ago

I had a friend involved in the community a few years back. Some of the stuff they did was pretty funny (like sponsoring a NASCAR car). However, the inner circle was basically a group of people in a chat room running pump and dump schemes with the currency.

tw1010 8y ago

Jesus christ is that flickering scroll thing distracting.

bredren 8y ago

I believe this man had a silent partner in creating doge, who also ended up holding nothing. Not mentioned here though.

api 8y ago
Was the partner a Shiba Inu?
bradlys 8y ago
That's the "Billy Markus". They're mentioned in the opening. And yes, he got nothing out of it.
leoc 8y ago
(Disclaimer: I'm not a shibe let alone a Dogecoin expert or insider, so all of this is just from casual observation. OTOH I do know one of the current devs http://coloringcrypto.com/index.php/2018/03/12/29-part-3-origin-of-dogecoin-not-so-much-a-joke-behind-the-scenes-with-dogecoin-dev-cor-team-ross-nicoll/ http://coloringcrypto.com/index.php/2018/03/12/29-part-3-ori... personally—he's on here as rnicoll—so I'm not unbiased either. On the third hand, I'm speaking for myself here, and what I say isn't co-ordinated with or approved by him or anyone else. And it sure as heck is not investment advice or a substitute for your own due diligence.) Are you thinking of Billy Markus? He's in the article. He's lower-profile than Jackson Palmer but his involvement is by no means a secret: https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/jp5x3d/dogecoins-founders-believe-in-the-power-of-meme-currencies https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/jp5x3d/dogecoins-... . It seems that Markus did all the actual initial software, having begun work on it before Palmer independently came up with the (rather brilliant) Dogecoin name and marketing strategy. (The other essential piece of journalism on the history of Dogecoin seems to be https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/78xqxb/the-guy-who-ruined-dogecoin https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/78xqxb/the-guy-wh... ) I'm a little skeptical about Palmer's ongoing Dogecoin apology tour. Partly that's because it looks like another marketing operation to me. That's not to say that what he's saying is simply insincere. But I do get the impression that when he saw the marketing opportunity to be the founder of a far-out, headline-generating cryptocurrency he seized on that; and now that he sees the opportunity to be the remorseful crypto-skeptic, delivering what-have-I-wrought confessions to a media that's mostly soured on cryptocash and is now highly receptive to that message, he's pouncing on that opportunity too. > When I asked about the recent Coinbase rumor, he answered, albeit hesitantly. “There’s no way of submitting all the legal documentation that Coinbase requires. It’s by no means likely that they’ll get it.” This does seem to be accurate https://www.reddit.com/r/dogecoin/comments/9j1yuf/dogecoin_doge_now_has_an_opportunity_to_list_on/e6omoj0/ https://www.reddit.com/r/dogecoin/comments/9j1yuf/dogecoin_d... https://twitter.com/langer_hans/status/1051943757715820545 https://twitter.com/langer_hans/status/1051943757715820545 but the reason why is hardly something that reflects only badly on Dogecoin. Evidently the Coinbase application process is designed for VC-funded startups, while Dogecoin is closer to a community-run open source project, led by people who have day jobs in tech and aren't gambling on a big ICO bonanza.