Elon Musk accused of manipulating Dogecoin price

Remember when Elon Musk changed Twitter's logo to Doge, the shiba inu dog mascot of cryptocurrency Dogecoin? It could cost him.

The CEO of Twitter and Tesla has been accused of insider trading and manipulating the price of Dogecoin in a proposed class action lawsuit.

According to Reuters, investors are claiming that Musk used his influence on Twitter, TV appearances, and paid online influencers to trade profitably at the expense of other investors.

SEE ALSO: Twitter is now worth one-third what Elon Musk paid

Musk has been very vocal about Dogecoin for years now, often causing spikes in Dogecoin's price. For example, in 2019 he said Dogecoin was his favorite currency. He also spoke favorably about Dogecoin on SNL, he said he would launch a satellite named Doge-1 to the moon, and at one point he considered allowing customers to buy Tesla cars using Doge (you can buy certain items in Tesla's online store with Doge).

Mashable Light Speed Want more out-of-this world tech, space and science stories? Sign up for Mashable's weekly Light Speed newsletter. By clicking Sign Me Up, you confirm you are 16+ and agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. Thanks for signing up!

Saying and doing all that is one thing, but using his massive online influence to pump Doge and then actually profit from it, which is what the lawsuit claims, is another.

A Wednesday night filing in Manhattan federal court claims that Musk, for example, sold roughly $124 million worth of Dogecoin in April after he replaced Twitter's logo with Dogecoin's logo, which led to a 30 percent increase in Dogecoin's price. According to the filling, Musk went on a "deliberate course of carnival barking, market manipulation and insider trading" in order to defraud investors. In all, the complaint claims Musk had intentionally driven the price of Dogecoin up by over 36,000 percent over several years, and then let it crash.

---

Related Stories

---

• Twitter replaces logo with doge as Musk seeks Dogecoin lawsuit dismissal
• Tesla sold most of its Bitcoin, but none of its Dogecoin
• Elon Musk's Boring Company to accept Dogecoin in Vegas loop
• Elon Musk *finally* explains what the hell Dogecoin is on 'SNL' Weekend Update
• Dogecoin: Everything you need to know about the cryptocurrency

---

Featured Video For You

---

The Pennsylvania Treasury Twitter account continues to own Elon Musk

---

This is, in fact, the third amendment of the lawsuit against Musk, originally filed last June. Musk is being sued for a total of $258 in damages. Musk's lawyers, who have not yet commented on the new amendment, have previously said the lawsuit was a "fanciful work of fiction."

Originally launched in 2013 by software engineers Billy Markus and Jackson Palmer as a fork (crypto lingo for copy) of another cryptocurrency called Litecoin, Dogecoin started as a joke but garnered a devoted following over the years. It's currently the ninth largest cryptocurrency according to CoinGecko, with a market cap of just over $10 billion.