Edward Snowden has hit out at memecoins such as Shiba Inu Coin, warning his followers about trying to get rich off "a clone of Dog money".
"Please carefully consider your odds of outsmarting a market that sold to you its stake in not even dog money but a CLONE of dog money," he tweeted earlier today.
Snowden's comments come after Shiba Inu saw a rapid surge into the top 10 cryptocurrencies, clashing with Dogecoin.
ShibArmy Responds To Snowden's Comments
In a later reply, Snowden emphasised his concerns about retail investors buying into these coins. "The problem is when they get emotionally manipulated into mortgaging the farm based on a meme's worth of understanding," he said.
While Snowden never explicitly mentioned Shiba Inu, SHIB hodlers quickly responded to the US whistleblower, defending their token.
Hodlers pushed back against the perception of SHIB, highlighting the wider ecosystem. Shiba has expanded to include Shiboshi NFTs and ShibaSwap, and will launch a layer-2 protocol in the future.
Shyoshi Kusama, the Shiba project lead, hit back at Snowden, referencing his past work. In a quote tweet of Snowden's warning, they said: "I never trusted you since the NSA is not far from Snowden parkway. So... yeah that."
Others described Snowden as a "bitcoin maximalist" who just wants all of the crypto investments to flow into BTC.
Snowden did not reply to any hodlers, but he instead issued this follow up:
Also, if you are mad at this tweet, you probably need to reduce your position size.
As much of Snowden's tweet took aim at clones of Dogecoin, many Doge hodlers took this as praise of Dogecoin.
Billy Markus, the founder of Dogecoin, agreed with Snowden but noted that even some promote DOGE as a get-rich-quick scheme.
While Shiba Inu Coin is the most popular Dogecoin-based token, there are countless other spin-offs presenting themselves as investment opportunities. Floki Inu, for example, a cryptocurrency named after Elon Musk's dog, launched an advertising campaign on the London Underground. It read: "Missed DOGE? Get FLOKI."
