Elon Musk Denies Wrongdoing in $258B Dogecoin Case

 Elon Musk, the billionaire CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, has reportedly asked a U.S. judge to dismiss a massive lawsuit accusing him of manipulating the price of Dogecoin, a popular cryptocurrency that started as a joke.

According to Reuters, Musk’s lawyers filed a motion on Friday, arguing that the lawsuit by Dogecoin investors was a “fanciful work of fiction” and that Musk’s tweets about Dogecoin were “innocuous and often silly”.

The lawsuit, filed in March, alleges that Musk was part of a racketeering scheme to artificially inflate the value of Dogecoin by more than 36,000% over two years and then let it crash, causing billions of dollars of losses for other investors. The plaintiffs are seeking $258 billion in damages, which is triple the estimated decline in Dogecoin’s market value in the 13 months before the lawsuit was filed.

Musk’s lawyers said that the plaintiffs failed to show how Musk intended to defraud anyone or what risks he concealed and that his statements such as “Dogecoin Rulz” and “no highs, no lows, only Doge” were too vague to support a fraud claim. They also said that Dogecoin was not a security and that there was nothing unlawful about tweeting words of support for “a legitimate cryptocurrency that continues to hold a market cap of nearly $10 billion”.

The plaintiff’s lawyer, Evan Spencer, said in an email that he was more confident than ever that his case would be successful. He said that Musk’s tweets had a significant impact on Dogecoin’s price and that he had a duty to disclose his involvement in the cryptocurrency.

Dogecoin, which features the image of a Shiba Inu dog as its logo, was created in 2013 as a parody of Bitcoin. However, it gained popularity and attention in recent years, thanks to the endorsement of celebrities like Musk, who often posted memes and jokes about it on his Twitter account. In May 2021, Musk appeared on Saturday Night Live and called Dogecoin “a hustle”, which caused its price to drop sharply.

Dogecoin’s price has been volatile since then, fluctuating between $0.16 and $0.35 in the past three months. At the time of writing, it is trading at around $0.24, with a market cap of $9.8 billion, making it the ninth-largest cryptocurrency by market value.