Jackson Palmer Didn't Actually Make Anything From Co-Creating Dogecoin

He co-founded Dogecoin as a joke, but Jackson Palmer had serious hopes for the cryptocurrency. In a 2018 Vice essay, Palmer explained that he wanted the project to drive innovation in cryptocurrency technology and to advance the vision of a peer-to-peer cash alternative that didn’t rely on financial institutions.

At first, Dogecoin inspired a Reddit community that welcomed people “dipping their toes into the world of cryptocurrencies for the first time.” Then, that community attracted bad actors and a disillusioned Palmer left the Dogecoin project in 2015.

Read on for more details about Palmer’s net worth, his career trajectory, and his views on cryptocurrency nowadays.

Palmer’s net worth isn’t public knowledge, but Decrypt reported in 2018 that he didn’t make a cent from Dogecoin, which currently has a market value of more than $12.4 billion. This hasn't stopped sources from speculating what the co-creator of Dogecoin might be worth, which some estimate to be around $1 million.

“It was always like a hobby project, like a side project thing,” Palmer told the site. “I made a lot of people rich, but I didn’t come away with any money. I get to tell people that I created Dogecoin, which is fun.”

Palmer also said that it isn't the missed profit that concerns him — it’s bankers and institutional investors’ encroachment in cryptocurrency. “What it really is, is a re-centralization of some of the stuff that bitcoin was trying to decentralize, right?” he said. “If we get to a point where the money distribution in bitcoin looks fairly identical to that of the traditional Wall St. banks, then what have we really achieved?”

In April 2015, Palmer announced he was taking an “extended leave of absence” from the “toxic” world of cryptocurrency.

“All in all, the cryptocurrency space increasingly feels like a bunch of white libertarian bros sitting around hoping to get rich and coming up with half-baked, buzzword-filled business ideas which often fail in an effort to try and do so,” he told Coindesk at the time. “The community is very white male dominated, and there are a lot of anarcho-libertarian beliefs caught up in there which I really don’t agree with.”

In his Vice article, Palmer wrote that “shark-like scammers and opportunists” had co-opted the Dogecoin community by late 2014. He also explained that the Dogecoin he had at the time was donated to charitable causes and that he hadn’t profited from the Dogecoin project at all.

Sometime after Palmer stepped away from Dogecoin, the cryptocurrency caught the attention of billionaire Elon Musk, who touted the coin as his "fav cryptocurrency" in December 2019. The coin then began gaining traction but because of its constant fluctuation in price, it has become one of the more volatile cryptocurrencies to exist. Despite this, Musk has kept his ties to Dogecoin.

In April 2023, Musk changed the Twitter logo to the Shiba Inu dog, the animal featured on Dogecoin.

Palmer also wrote that, after his Dogecoin exit, he started seeing signs that the world was “entering a renewed period of speculative crypto-mania.” He got back into the game for the sake of his friends and family.

“These concerning observations have led me back into the cryptocurrency space to help educate my co-workers, friends, and family who are asking me if they should pour their money into cryptocurrencies,” he wrote. “Hopefully, if I do my job, they will better understand the potential pitfalls of doing so.”

According to his LinkedIn profile, Palmer currently works as the senior director of product management at ‎Adobe. He took on the role in December 2021 and since been responsible for leading the Growth & Data Science teams. Prior to accepting that role, Palmer had been working for Adobe for the past 12 years and four months, serving in various roles.