Markus, who tweets under the handle Shibetoshi Nakamoto in a nod to pseudonymous bitcoin founder Satoshi Nakamoto clarified his role within the Dogecoin space in a Twitter post on Sunday, saying he no longer works for the project but is simply just a community member. However, he still holds 220,000 in DOGE.
However, that doesn’t mean he won’t be supportive of those who have volunteered to continue with Dogecoin.
“I will defend those who I feel are actively making the space better,” he said. “I will discourage those who I feel aren’t.”
In a Dogecoin subreddit posted this year, Markus said he sold all his crypto holdings after getting laid off in 2015 and ended up buying a used Honda Civic. At the time, Markus liquidated his entire crypto portfolio for nearly $10,000.
DOGE has been up a whopping 6,943 percent since the beginning of the year but, at the moment, it is down 76.1 percent from its all-time high of $0.7376 last reached on May 8.