Tesla and its CEO, Elon Musk, have successfully dismissed a lawsuit accusing them of manipulating Dogecoin’s (DOGE) value, which allegedly caused $258 billion in damages.
US District Judge Alvin Hellerstein of the Southern District of New York dismissed the case on August 29.
Judge Hellerstein ruled that the claims against Musk and Tesla were based on “material misrepresentations” of Musk’s tweets about Dogecoin.
Did you know?
Want to get smarter & wealthier with crypto?
Subscribe – We publish new crypto explainer videos every week!
The tweets in question included Musk’s humorous claims of becoming Dogecoin’s CEO and suggesting a physical Dogecoin could be sent to the moon in SpaceX. The judge described these statements as “aspirational and puffery, not factual,” noting that they could not be reasonably relied upon by investors. The lawsuit adds:
As for Musk and Tesla’s alleged “pump and dump” scheme, it is not possible to understand the allegations that form the basis of Plaintiffs’ conclusion of market manipulation.
The lawsuit, filed in June 2022 by a group of Dogecoin investors, alleged that Musk artificially inflated Dogecoin’s price by over 36,000% over two years, only to let it crash, and accused him of using his influence to run a “Dogecoin Pyramid Scheme,” seeking $258 billion in damages.
On March 31, Musk’s legal team requested the lawsuit’s dismissal, calling the claims and the damages demand a “fanciful work of fiction.” The court ultimately agreed.
At the time of writing, the price of DOGE has decreased by 1.07%, trading at around $0.10.
With this legal victory, Musk and Tesla have avoided what could have been one of the largest financial penalties in history.
In other news, former President Donald Trump has suggested he may offer Musk a Cabinet position if he wins the upcoming election against Kamala Harris.
Gode is a Web3 Market Analyst who researches the most important industry events and interprets how they affect the wider Web3 space. Her formal education in media culture & digital rhetoric allows her to employ a methodical approach to evaluating critical Web3 news data, including large-scale events and the wider social sentiment within the ecosystem.
Gode is a mutilingual professional, having studied in multiple universities all across Europe. This allows her to have a one-of-a-kind opportunity to analyze Web3 social sentiments spanning different cultures and languages and, in turn, develop a much deeper understanding of how the Web3 space is growing within different communities. With the rest of her team, Gode works to identify crucial crypto news patterns and provide unbiased and data-driven information.
Gode’s passions include working and communicating with people, and when she’s not researching Web3 news, she spends her time traveling and watching true crime documentaries.
