Dogecoin creator Billy Markus, also known as Shibetoshi Nakamoto, has jokingly teased about who wrote most of the Dogecoin code: Bitcoin developers. Markus further explains his statement: “They (Bitcoin devs) didn’t make dogecoin, but dogecoin is mostly bitcoin code.”
Q: who wrote most of the dogecoin code?
A: bitcoin devs
— Shibetoshi Nakamoto (@BillyM2k) May 31, 2022
Jackson Palmer and Billy Markus founded Dogecoin in 2013. Dogecoin is a proof-of-work cryptocurrency that was created as a joke based on a popular meme portraying a Shiba Inu (a Japanese breed of dog). This comes as Tesla CEO Elon Musk intensified his criticism of Dogecoin co-founder Jackson Palmer, saying that the Australian software developer never wrote a single line of Dogecoin code.
And Palmer always forgets to mention that he never wrote a single line of Dogecoin code …
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 31, 2022
Musk wrote, “And Palmer always forgets to mention that he never wrote a single line of Dogecoin code.” Palmer responded with a now-deleted tweet that referred to a Github page of his contributions. Fellow co-founder Billy Markus, attempting to calm heightened emotions, tweeted that neither he nor Palmer contributed much to the project, which was originally supposed to be a joke.
Markus humorously stated, “The people after us did exponentially more than either Jackson or I did on the codebase. “I think I wrote like 20 lines of code and copied the rest.”
Dogecoin’s growth
Dogecoin rose to all-time highs of $0.73 in May 2021, building upon its earlier run-up following Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s endorsement of the meme coin as his favorite cryptocurrency. Elon Musk’s visit to Saturday Night Live (SNL) coincided with the cryptocurrency’s ascent to all-time highs.
Dogecoin (DOGE) momentarily rose on May 27 when Elon Musk tweeted that items for SpaceX, his space exploration business, would soon be purchasable with Dogecoin, similar to Tesla merchandise. Following the tweet, the price of Dogecoin jumped by as much as 15% before reversing its gains. Dogecoin was trading at $0.085 at the time of writing.