Elon Musk has had dismissed a federal lawsuit that accused the Tesla (TSLA) chief executive officer of manipulating the price of cryptocurrency Dogecoin (DOGE) and defrauding investors.
The lawsuit claimed that Musk intentionally hyped Dogecoin on social media and other venues to drive the price up.
The suit also accused Musk of conducting insider trading and causing billions of dollars of losses for ordinary investors when the price of Dogecoin ultimately collapsed.
Investors were seeking $258 billion U.S. in damages from Musk.
However, after reviewing arguments in the case, U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein in Manhattan dismissed the lawsuit with prejudice, meaning it cannot be refiled in court.
Judge Hellerstein concluded that no reasonable investor could rely on tweets concerning Dogecoin made by Musk to pursue a securities fraud claim.
Hellerstein added that Musk's tweets that Dogecoin was the “future currency of Earth” and could be used to pay for a trip to the moon by his company SpaceX were “aspirational” at best, “not factual,” and that most reasonable people would not take the claims seriously.
Musk's own lawyer, Alex Spiro, said the comments about Dogecoin amounted to a bunch of “silly tweets.”
Still, investors accused Musk of using Twitter posts and a 2021 appearance on the TV show “Saturday Night Live” to profitably trade Dogecoin at their expense.
The lawsuit said Musk deliberately drove up Dogecoin's price more than 36,000% over two years and then let it crash, often timing trades around his public statements.
Investors said this included when Musk sold Dogecoin in April 2023 after replacing Twitter's blue bird logo with Dogecoin’s Shiba Inu dog logo, causing Dogecoin's price to spike 30%.
During his “Saturday Night Live” appearance, Musk called Dogecoin a “hustle” while playing a fictitious financial expert in a skit.
Dogecoin is currently trading at $0.10 U.S., having risen 54% in the past 12 months.
The price of Dogecoin reached an all-time high of $0.64 U.S. in spring 2021 when Musk appeared on Saturday Night Live.
