Known for his sometimes controversial behavior and fresh outbursts on social media, Elon Musk is also attracting quite a few critics. Now some of them have filed a giant class action lawsuit against the contractor, reports among other things Forbes And the Reuters.
Musk was personally sued, along with his two companies, Tesla and SpaceX, for a net sum of $258 billion, more than 2.5 trillion kroner, by a group of cryptocurrency investors.
accused of tampering
In the class action, led by an investor named Keith Johnson, Musk was accused of manipulating the value of Dogecoin – a currency that Musk often promotes on social media, among other things.
The accusations are that Musk is running a “pyramid scheme” by deliberately advertising Dogecoin with the aim of driving up the coin’s price for his own gain. According to the accusations, this affected many to invest in a cryptocurrency that, like most other cryptocurrencies, has recently experienced a sharp decline in its value.
The parties to the lawsuit claim that they have lost $86 billion since Musk began buying, developing, promoting and managing Dogecoin in 2019. However, the total financial damage is estimated to triple that amount, $258 billion.
It is claimed that Musk has always claimed that Dogecoin is a legitimate investment, when in reality it has absolutely no value.
bragging about the currency
The Tesla and SpaceX chief is also said to have contributed to the depreciation, among other things by participating in the American sitcom Saturday Night Live. There, Musk appeared earlier this year as a financial advisor who mentioned Dogecoin with words that prosecutors claimed caused the price to crash.
Musk has praised Dogecoin on several occasions, primarily on Twitter. In February of this year For example, post a message He claims that Dogecoin is the “people’s cryptocurrency” and he has He went so far as to describe himself as a “Godfather.”.
However, the lawsuit clearly assumes that Musk was actively involved in the development of Dogecoin, for which there is little evidence. On the contrary, one of the founders of Dogecoin, Jackson Palmer, Previously criticized Musk He called him a “selfish little crook” after Tesla stopped accepting bitcoin as payment.
on the other side Musk previously mentioned He collaborated with coin developers to make transactions more efficient and described the work as “promising.”
How far the lawsuit will go in court remains to be seen. At the time of writing, Musk should not have commented on the case.
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