Elon Musk has filed a motion to dismiss a lawsuit accusing him of running a pyramid scheme to support Dogecoin.
The lawsuit, which was filed by Dogecoin investors last year, alleged that Musk drove up the price of the cryptocurrency and then allowed it to crash, generating billions of dollars of profit at other investors’ expense.
Musk’s lawyers have called the lawsuit a “fanciful work of fiction” and argue that his tweets about Dogecoin were innocuous and did not defraud anyone.
The investors cited Musk’s portrayal of a fictitious financial expert on a “Weekend Update” segment of NBC’s “Saturday Night Live,” where he referred to Dogecoin as “a hustle.” (via Reuters)
However, according to Musk’s lawyers, the investors failed to provide any explanation on how Musk intended to deceive anyone or what risks he was hiding. They also claimed that Musk’s comments, including “Dogecoin Rulz” and “no highs, no lows, only Doge,” were too ambiguous to support the fraud allegation.
The damages figure in the lawsuit is triple the estimated decline in Dogecoin’s market value in the 13 months before the lawsuit was filed.
The case is Johnson et al v. Musk et al, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York, No. 22-05037.
