• A Dogecoin cocreator slammed Elon Musk after the Tesla CEO said bitcoin’s energy use was “insane.”
• The comments came after Musk said Dogecoin was the “future of currency” on “SNL.”
• Jackson Palmer, the cocreator, also tweeted that the “SNL episode was cringe, bro.”
• See more stories on Insider’s business page.

A cocreator of Dogecoin called Elon Musk a “self-absorbed grifter” in a now deleted tweet after the Tesla CEO stopped allowing customers to pay for vehicles in bitcoin.

According to multiple Twitter users who captured screenshots of the tweets and shared them on the social-media platform, Jackson Palmer said, “Reminder: Elon Musk is and always will be a self-absorbed grifter.” He also said in a follow-up tweet that he would be “removing this in 1 min as that’s all I have to say and I enjoy the quiet life.”

In a third tweet, he added: “ps. SNL episode was cringe, bro.” Palmer was referring to Musk’s appearance on “Saturday Night Live” last weekend.

The blog Zero Hedge also reported on the posts. Tesla did not immediately respond to Insider’s request for comment.

Palmer, who created the digital Dogecoin currency in 2013 with fellow software engineer Billy Markus as a joke, says on his website he has not been involved with the Dogecoin project or the cryptocurrency market “in many years.” His Thursday night posts surprised users who rarely hear from the self-described “product & data geek based in San Francisco.”

—?Preston Pysh? (@PrestonPysh) May 14, 2021

—notsofast (@notsofast) May 14, 2021

—?????? (@wendykauri) May 14, 2021

—Holmes The Trader (@yat_fx) May 14, 2021

Palmer’s tweets came after the Tesla CEO announced the company was halting payments via bitcoin for its vehicles. The suspension was due to the negative environmental impact of mining cryptocurrency, which requires increased use of fossil fuels.

“Cryptocurrency is a good idea on many levels and we believe it has a promising future, but this cannot come at great cost to the environment,” the company said via a tweet posted by Musk. He also said the trending energy usage of bitcoin over the past few months was “insane.”

After Musk made the comments, bitcoin plummeted as much as 15%.

Read more: How Elon Musk’s tweets created a new economy

Palmer’s tweets also followed Musk’s appearance hosting “SNL,” during which he called Dogecoin the “future of currency” and said it would “take over the world,” as Insider’s Allana Akhtar reported.

Musk has long publicly voiced his support for cryptocurrency, including supporting investing in Dogecoin. Tesla also reported buying $1.5 billion worth of bitcoin in February, according to CNBC, when it said it planned to start accepting the currency as payment.

On Thursday evening, Musk tweeted that he was working with Dogecoin developers to “improve system transaction efficiency. Potentially promising.”

Musk’s net worth dropped by $25 billion this week.