CEO of Tesla, Elon Musk, and his legal teams have come out to deny allegations of running a pyramid scheme using the popular meme cryptocurrency, Dogecoin. The billionaire was sued in a $258 billion lawsuit by DOGE investors in June 2022, claiming that the Dogecoin supporter operates an illegal investment platform.
DOGE For Elon
According to reports, the founder of the electric car maker, Tesla, and new owner of Twitter, Elon Musk, along with his legal team, is asking a US judge to throw out the $258 billion lawsuit against the tech entrepreneur. Last June, some Dogecoin investors filed a case in a United States court against Musk, alleging that he is using the popular meme crypto to operate a pyramid scheme.
Founded on December 6, 2013, Dogecoin ($DOGE) was created as a joke digital currency in response to the emergence of Bitcoin, the pioneer cryptocurrency. The token was created by software developers Billy Markus and Jackson Palmer.
As a decentralized peer-to-peer digital asset, Dogecoin is represented by the Japanese dog breed (Shiba Inu), with Doge as its mascot. A few years later, the asset’s popularity spiked with significant support from the Tesla boss and Mark Cuban, the owner of the US-based professional basketball team, Dallas Mavericks.
Dogecoin is currently the eighth-largest crypto asset by market capitalization, with a valuation of almost $10.85 billion. Musk reportedly revealed in 2019 that DOGE was his favorite cryptocurrency and had, on several occasions, promoted the asset via Twitter.
Also read:The billionaire has already made DOGE as payment for some of his company’s merchandise since 2021.
Musk’s Attorneys Deny Allegations
Per reports on March 31, Musk’s lawyers assert that the allegations against the billionaire are false and unfounded in their filing in a Manhattan federal court. According to them, Musk’s numerous tweets supporting DOGE were not investment-driven remarks.
They argue that all his posts and comments on the microblogging site are ambiguous enough to promote and justify fraud in Dogecoin investments. Furthermore, Dogecoin investors believe that Musk’s tweets and posts triggered a spike in the price of Dogecoin, which later plummeted, causing significant losses.
According to them, Musk’s May 2021 guest appearance on the “Saturday Night Live” show, where he called Dogecoin a “hustle,” is another proof of his deception. In their counter-filing and attempt to convince the judge to drop the case, Musk’s attorneys emphasize that his Dogecoin-related posts are “harmless and always absurd” given his personality.
In their argument, the lawyers noted nothing illegal about supporting a legitimate crypto asset widely used in several jurisdictions. On the asset’s classification, the billionaire’s attorneys dismissed the investor’s claim that DOGE is a security.
Justifying the lawsuit, the investors claimed that Musk’s remarks drove them to inject their funds into buying the digital meme asset to experience massive setbacks after the token’s value tumbled. Meanwhile, Musk’s legal representatives labeled the investor’s lawsuit as a “fantastic work of fiction” as they called on the judge to dismiss it over lack of supporting evidence.
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