Dogecoin investors have once again accused Elon Musk of insider trading and manipulating the price of DOGE, alleging that he has cost them billions of dollars.
Investors accuse the Tesla CEO of intentionally driving up DOGE’s price by more than 36,000% over two years and then letting it fall, to short the crypto.
It is the third amendment to the lawsuit, first filed in June 2022, and is seeking class-action status.
In the suit filed in a Manhattan federal court on Wednesday 31 May, investors say Musk has used his Twitter platform, his infamous Saturday Night Live stint and other ‘publicity stunts’ to trade at their folly through multiple DOGE wallets that he or his company Tesla possess.
A particular ‘Dogecoin rulz’ tweet from 2019 has also been singled out in the suit.
The filing adds that a “deliberate course of carnival barking, market manipulation and insider trading” enabled Musk to defraud people, while promoting himself and his objectives.
Investors have also accused Musk of selling more than $124m worth of DOGE when he replaced the Twitter logo in April – which saw the DOGE price spike in value following the move.
In an earlier response to the initial lawsuit, Musk’s lawyers have previously called the lawsuit a “fantasy”.
However, Musk lawyer Alex Spiro declined to comment yesterday.
So far, Musk has also not responded to the suit on Twitter.
Elon Musk and Dogecoin
The ‘Dogefather’ Musk calls DOGE his ‘favourite’ coin and has incorporated it at SpaceX and Tesla.
However, following his 2021 Saturday Night Live hosting slot, the DOGE price fell by more than 30%.
Whenever Elon Musk decides to discuss a coin, the market reacts accordingly. Miladys Meme Coin recently got the similar treatment when it jumped by more than 12,000% following a tweet from the Tesla boss.
At the time of writing, the price of DOGE is trading at $0.07224, up 0.90% in the past 24 hours. It’s currently the world’s eighth-largest crypto, according to CoinMarketCap, with a live market cap of $10,067,914,842. It has a circulating supply of 139,596,356,384 DOGE coins.
