econintersect.com
Tesla and Twitter Chief Elon Musk has urged a New York court to drop a $258 billion lawsuit filed by Dogecoin investors against him.
In a March 31 filing in Manhattan Federal court, Musk’s legal representatives said that the lawsuit was a “fanciful work of fiction” over the CEO’s tweets about the crypto token. Based on a statement by his legal team, the investors never explained how Musk tried to defraud people in Dogecoin investment.
Musk’s lawyers commented:
“There is nothing unlawful about tweeting words of support for, or funny pictures about, a legitimate cryptocurrency that continues to hold a market cap of nearly $10 billion. This court should put a stop to plaintiffs’ fantasy and dismiss the complaint.”
Musk’s legal team stated that their client’s continuous support for Dogecoin ‘remained unshaken’ despite the dismissal plea. Elon Musk also tweeted that he was still purchasing the token. He has been a major proponent of Dogecoin in the past years, preferring to buy the meme token over other cryptos, including the flagship crypto Bitcoin.
I will keep supporting Dogecoin
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 19, 2022
In the past, Musk asked his Twitter followers to share ideas for Dogecoin enhancements. He insisted that he would consider accepting the meme coin as a method of payment for services at his firms, SpaceX and Tesla.
Several Dogecoin investors filed a class action suit against Musk, SpaceX, and Tesla, in 2022, accusing the billionaire of inflating Dogecoin price by more than 36,000% over two years and letting its value drop steeply.
Dogecoin investors said that Elon Musk knew that the token lacked any intrinsic value while promoting it, claiming that the price crash generated billions of dollars in profit for Musk and a few investors at others’ expense.
Besides highlighting Musk’s Twitter posts, these investors listed his appearance on NBC’s Saturday Night Live, where he played a role as a financial expert in the court filing. In the Weekend Update segment of the show, Elon Musk mentioned Dogecoin, and called the coin ‘a hustle.’
The $258 billion figure mentioned in the lawsuit represents triple the amount of the estimated drop in Dogecoin value over 13 months before the suit was presented and filed in the New York court.
What is Dogecoin?
— Elon Musk, the Dogefather @elonmusk pic.twitter.com/3ZtD5gv221
— DogeDesigner (@cb_doge) March 15, 2023
This is not the first time that Elon Musk has faced a lawsuit for his Twitter posts, a platform he owns. Tesla shareholders sued Musk for a tweet posted in August 2018 where the CEO alleged that he had secured financing to turn his car manufacturing firm into a private entity. Nonetheless, he was cleared of all allegations about the post by San Francisco juries.
Dogecoin Rises
Dogecoin gained more than 20% to reach its 5-week high of $0.085 after Musk’s request to drop the charge against him. After he replaced the Twitter logo with Dogecoin, the memecoin surged to peak at $0.1026. It was trading at $0.0965 at the time of publication.
Anonymous crypto analyst Ali Charts stated that if the toke breached its key resistance level of $0.093, it could continue with its upside momentum and even change the $0.095 resistance zone into a support. Others say that the current upside momentum will subside and the bears will return to the market.
Baby Doge, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo,
Baby Doge, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo,
Baby Doge, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo,
Baby Doge— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 1, 2021
Recent data from the on-chain analytics company Santiment indicated that Dogecoin whale addresses, each having more than 10 million of the token, had cumulatively acquired 1.47 billion in coins (worth around $123.1 million) since New Year in different crypto exchanges.
Analysts stated that many of these big Dogecoin investors planned to hold the token for the long term or more than 12 months. The long-term investors now control more than $3.76 billion worth of Dogecoin in circulation.