On Thursday night, Elon Musk and his EV firm, Tesla won the dismissal of a case that accused them of rigging crypto memecoin Dogecoin and defrauding investors. The lawsuit had alleged both Musk and Tesla of ‘pumping’ the memecoin and conducting insider trading, which led to traders losing billions of dollars.
Some traders had accused that Musk used Twitter posts, made a 2021 appearance on NBC’s “Saturday Night Live” and through other publicity stunts traded via different dogecoin wallets controlled by him or Tesla. He was accused of making profits at the expense of investors by hyping $DOGE.
Musk was also accused of deliberately pump dogecoin’s price more than 36,000% over two years and then dumping it by letting it crash, as both Tesla, and him “timing trades to Musk’s public statements and activities concerning dogecoin”.
U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein in Manhattan, dismissed the case with prejudice, and thus, it cannot be brought again. He ruled that Musk’s tweets that dogecoin could be used to buy Tesla or fly to the moon by SpaceX were “aspirational and puffery, not factual and susceptible to being falsified.”
He also said it was “not possible to understand” the investors’ market manipulation and insider trading claims.
Meanwhile, Musk’s lawyer sought dismissal as he claimed that there’s nothing wrong with his often silly tweets and there was no proof Musk held two wallets for executing suspicious trading, or that he or Tesla ever sold $DOGE.
