Elon Musk Indicted for Insider Trading with Dogecoin Using 'Publicity stunt'

Elon Musk’s tweets often influence the price of Dogecoin, but allegations from investors suggest that Musk trades around his social media activity.

Tesla boss Elon Musk was found guilty of using dogecoin (DOGE) to conduct insider trading among his followers, in a court filing against the tech entrepreneur on Wednesday, he was charged with memecoin investors.

The charges are a follow-up to a $258 billion class-action lawsuit filed by the same group in June 2022, accusing Musk and his company of causing hundreds of billions of dollars in losses to Dogecoin holders.

Elon Musk’s Dogecoin Agenda

According to an amended document filed May 31 in Manhattan federal court, Elon Musk engaged in "a deliberate carnival bark" through a "publicity circus" designed to inflate the price of Dogecoin. called the market manipulation process".

These stunts include his public appearances and social media campaigns hyping Dogecoin, dating back to April 2019. These stunts boosted the price of Dogecoin by 36,000% to over $0.70 by May 2021. Today, DOGE is trading 90% down from that high.

"Musk's pretense that promoting Dogecoin is just for good-natured fun does not mean that it is not credible to be taken seriously," the document read, calling the tycoon a "top predator" and referring to his Millions of Twitter followers are seen as prey.

The lawsuit notes that numerous studies have demonstrated the impact of Elon Musk’s tweets on Dogecoin prices. In fact, Musk’s announcement that he will start accepting Dogecoin at SpaceX in 2021, as well as his visit to Twitter’s headquarters after taking over the company last year, both contributed to the change in Dogecoin’s price.

Musk exerted his influence again, changing Twitter’s blue bird logo to a picture of a Shiba Inu on the Doge Meme for three days, helping drive up the token’s price by 30%.

The filing added that Musk and Tesla traded profitably around the billionaire's "anticipated move," citing blockchain records as evidence.

Specifically, the lawsuit claims to have tracked down a wallet address, DH5ya, that allegedly belonged to Musk and became the largest single holder of Dogecoin until February 2021. The wallet subsequently sold millions of dollars worth of Dogecoin multiple times throughout April 2021.

**Securities Fraud? **

A key part of the lawsuit is the assumption that Dogecoin is an unregistered security under the SEC's existing standards.

Musk was founded in 2013 by Dogecoin founders Billy Marcus and Jackson Palmer, but they have not been involved in the development of the project for years. Marcus himself often jokes with Elon Musk on Twitter, and they both make frequent light-hearted comments about cryptocurrencies on Twitter.

When the original lawsuit was filed last year, Musk's lawyers said the lawsuit was fanciful. “There is nothing illegal about tweeting statements or funny pictures in support of a legitimate cryptocurrency with a market capitalization of nearly $10 billion,” they said.