Elon Musk seeks dismissal of multi-billion dollar lawsuit against Dogecoin

After getting slapped with a $258 billion dollar lawsuit by Dogecoin investors, Elon Musk and Tesla have argued to dismiss the lawsuit in front of a Manhattan Federal court in the United States. Musk’s lawyers have called the multi-billion lawsuit a work of fiction and innocuous tweets from Musk do not constitute fraud. In 2022, Keith Johnson, a dogecoin investor, filed a lawsuit against Elon Musk for artificially inflating the price and called the cryptocurrency a ‘pyramid scheme’.

Musk's lawyers argued that Dogecoin is not a ‘security’ and that the investor suit has been unable to explain how silly and harmless tweets on Dogecoin by Musk can be called fraud. The defendants also argued that Dogecoin having a market capitalization of over $10 billion dollars makes it a legitimate investment. Dogecoin Foundation is also on the list of defendants with Elon Musk and Tesla.

The lawsuit alleges that Musk pumped up the price of the coin by 36,000% over two years and was instrumental when the price crashed. In 2021, Elon Musk made an appearance on late night comedy show, Saturday Night Live, and called Dogecoin a ‘hustle’ which led to the price of dogecoin by 43%.

Dogecoin was created by Billy Markus and Jackson Palmer in 2013 as a lighthearted take on Bitcoin, featuring the popular internet meme of a Shiba Inu dog. Dogecoin has a relatively fast block time of just one minute, which means that transactions can be processed quickly compared to other cryptocurrencies.

In 2021, Elon Musk's cryptic tweets on Dogecoin led the cryptocurrency to boom. At its peak, the cryptocurrency was trading at $0.74. Elon Musk soon announced that Tesla would allow the acceptance of Dogecoin for the purchase of Tesla merchandise.

Major cryptocurrencies prices on 9 am IST, April 3 2023:

Bitcoin: $27,718.73 USD

-2.73%

Ethereum: $1,776.77 USD
-2.28%

Tether: $0.9999 USD
-0.02%

USD Coin: $0.9996 USD
+0.03%