Elon Musk and Tesla have successfully defeated a lawsuit accusing them of manipulating the price of Dogecoin, leading to $258 billion in alleged damages. On August 29, 2024, U.S. District Court Judge Alvin Hellerstein dismissed the case, asserting that no reasonable investor could rely on Musk’s tweets as sound investment advice.
The lawsuit, filed in June 2022 by a group of Dogecoin investors, claimed that Musk’s tweets drove up Dogecoin’s price by over 36,000% before it eventually crashed, and accused him of running a “Dogecoin Pyramid Scheme.” The investors sought $258 billion in damages, a figure Musk’s lawyers called a “fanciful work of fiction.”
Judge Hellerstein ruled that Musk’s statements about Dogecoin, including claims of becoming its “CEO” and launching a Dogecoin to the moon, were “aspirational and puffery,” not factual claims that could mislead investors.
Following the dismissal, the price of Dogecoin remained largely unaffected, trading at around $0.10 with no significant change over the previous 24 hours, though it had declined by 20% over the month of August.