Elon Musk fires back at Dogecoin creator over his claim the billionaire struggled with coding: 'my kids wrote better code when they were 12'

• Elon Musk ripped into Jackson Palmer over claims the billionaire struggled with computer programming.
• The Dogecoin co-creator made comments critical of Musk to an Australian news outlet.
• Musk responded to the article and said Palmer "never wrote a line of Dogecoin code."

Elon Musk took aim at Dogecoin co-creator Jackson Palmer on Twitter after he called the richest man in the world a "grifter."

In an interview with Australian news site Crikey, Palmer said he messaged Musk on Twitter several years ago after creating a bot that could help identify crypto scams on Twitter. During the exchange, he said it became clear that Musk "didn't understand coding as well as he made out." Palmer said Musk didn't know how to run the Python script.

"He sells a vision in hopes that he can one day deliver what he's promising, but he doesn't know that," Palmer said. "He's just really good at pretending he knows. That's very evident with the Tesla full-self-driving promise."

Musk responded to the article on Twitter with some harsh comments of his own.

"My kids write better code when they were 12 than the nonsense script Jackson sent me," Musk tweeted on Tuesday regarding Palmer's code from 2018. "If it's so great, he should share it with the world and make everyone's experience with Twitter better," he added.

Palmer took the opportunity to share the code which he posted on GitHub four years ago. He did not respond to a request for comment from Insider.

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

Palmer, who left Dogecoin in 2015 citing a "toxic" culture, said in a Twitter thread that Twitter founder Jack Dorsey had told him in 2018 that the social media network was trying to run a similar script. Though, Palmer noted the code wouldn't be as effective today as scammer tactics have become increasingly sophisticated.

Musk, who is in the process of purchasing Twitter, didn't stop there. He questioned Palmer's involvement with Dogecoin, a cryptocurrency that the billionaire has continually promoted. Musk's support for the meme coin on Twitter has repeatedly helped buoy the coin's value. Tesla and SpaceX have even begun accepting Dogecoin as payment for some of its merchandise.

"Palmer always forgets to mention that he never wrote a single line of Dogecoin code," Musk tweeted.

In a since deleted tweet, Palmer called for Dogecoin co-creator Billy Markus to respond to Musk's accusation.

"The people after us did exponentially more than either jackson or i did on the code base," Markus wrote on Twitter. "I think i wrote like 20 lines of code and copied the rest."

—Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 31, 2022

While both Palmer and Markus are no longer working on Dogecoin, the two started the cryptocurrency as a joke in 2013.

Markus, a former IBM software engineer, and Palmer, an Adobe software engineer, hadn't even met when they first created the meme token. Palmer tweeted about investing in "dogecoin" as a joke and bought the domain name dogecoin.com. Markus stumbled upon the site and got in contact with Palmer regarding his own efforts to program a digital currency that could appeal to larger demographics.

The two engineers launched Dogecoin within the year. The cryptocurrency is now one of the world's most valuable digital coins.

Palmer is not the first person to find himself in Musk's crosshairs. In recent months, the Tesla CEO has engaged in Twitter spats with the head of Russia's space agency and the Biden Administration.