The recent decline in cryptocurrency markets has wiped out hundreds of billions of dollars for many crypto enthusiasts and investors, but while some sit silently at home mourning their crypto investments, others are filing lawsuits and seeking blame. One of them is Dogecoin investor Keith Johnson, who has filed a lawsuit against Elon Musk for $258 billion, claiming the latter ‘pumped’ the price of Dogecoin on his social media.
In a lawsuit filed in federal court in Manhattan, plaintiff Johnson accused Musk, along with his electric car company Tesla and space tourism company SpaceX, of running a ‘pyramid scheme’ by promoting the coin to inflate its price. This ultimately happened. Musk’s memes ‘To the moon’, which he frequently posted on his Twitter profile, are a prime example of price pumping that, of course, eventually collapsed. The plaintiff uses those tweets and Musk’s own references where he called himself ‘Dogefather’ to prove that Musk controls the cryptocurrency and is responsible for the damage among investors who lost money as the cryptocurrency fell from its peak value of nearly $0.74 to just over $0.05 in recent days.
Pyramid scheme
– The defendants have been aware since 2019 that Dogecoin had no value as they claimed, but they promoted it to profit from its trading – the lawsuit states. Musk used his pedestal as the richest man in the world to manage and manipulate the Dogecoin pyramid scheme for profit, exposure, and entertainment – the lawsuit continues.
