Elon Musk Wins Lawsuit Over Dogecoin Manipulation

On August 29, Judge Alvin Hellerstein of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York dismissed a lawsuit accusing Elon Musk of manipulating the price of the memecoin Dogecoin. Judge Hellerstein stated that the defendants had made several “material misrepresentations” regarding Musk’s tweets about Dogecoin, including Musk’s claim that he would become the official CEO of Dogecoin and that he might put a “literal” Dogecoin on a SpaceX vehicle and fly it to the moon.

The judge remarked:

These statements are aspirational, not factual, and cannot be proven […] no reasonable investor could rely on them.

No investor should consider Elon Musk’s tweets as reliable investment advice.

A group of disgruntled Dogecoin investors accused Musk of driving up Dogecoin’s price “by over 36,000% in two years and then letting it crash.” They also claimed that Musk “leveraged his position as the world’s richest man to operate and manipulate the Dogecoin Pyramid Scheme.”

On March 31, Musk requested the lawsuit be dismissed. His lawyers described the allegations and the $258 billion in damages as “a fanciful work of fiction” in Manhattan’s federal court.

Besides Dogecoin, Elon Musk also mentioned another meme, WIF, during his livestream. His Bitcoin wallet address was also revealed by Arkham.

The price of Dogecoin remained largely unchanged in the 24 hours following the news of the lawsuit’s dismissal. At the time of publication, Dogecoin was trading at $0.10, having declined by 20% over the past month, according to data from CoinMarketCap.