Elon Musk, the owner of Twitter Inc (NYSE: TWTR) and CEO of Tesla Inc (NASDAQ: TSLA), recently rebranded his social media platform by incorporating Dogecoin (DOGE), only days after he filed a petition to have a US$258 billion lawsuit dismissed over his promotion of the memecoin.
Musk, who bought Twitter for US$44 billion in October 2022, replaced the platform’s traditional blue bird icon with the cartoon Shiba Inu dog face, which is associated with Dogecoin.
Musk’s lawyers had requested a US judge to throw out the lawsuit accusing him of running a pyramid scheme to support DOGE cryptocurrency. The lawsuit accuses Elon Musk, Tesla, and SpaceX of being involved in a crypto pyramid scheme through Dogecoin. The plaintiffs allege that the defendants artificially inflated DOGE’s market capitalization to a peak of US$93 billion from US$250 million before crashing the coin down to US$7 billion at the time of filing, and they are seeking three times the US$83 billion in losses.
Musk’s lawyers have dismissed the lawsuit as a “fanciful work of fiction” and called his tweets “innocuous and often silly.” They argued that there is nothing illegal about tweeting words of support for or posting funny pictures of a legitimate cryptocurrency that holds a market cap of almost US$10 billion.
Legal actions against cryptocurrency influencers have become more prevalent. While podcast host and professional boxer Logan Paul faces a lawsuit over his failed “CryptoZoo” NFT project, US regulators have also charged Kim Kardashian, Lindsay Lohan, and Miles Parks McCollum (known as Lil Yachty) for their failure to disclose compensation for crypto promotions. It remains unclear if Musk received any financial compensation for his numerous tweets about Dogecoin.
It’s inevitable pic.twitter.com/eBKnQm6QyF
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 18, 2020
Dogecoin, a cryptocurrency launched in 2013 by co-founders Billy Markus and Jackson Palmer, was initially created as a joke and does not have a central issuing authority. In 2019, Elon Musk began tweeting about the memecoin, expressing his enthusiasm for it as his favorite cryptocurrency.
In November 2020, SpaceX paid for a rocket with DOGE to launch its DOGE-1 payload, while Tesla began accepting DOGE as a payment option for select merchandise in December 2020. DOGE enthusiasts were eagerly anticipating Musk’s appearance on Saturday Night Live (SNL) in May 2021, hoping for an endorsement to SNL’s mainstream viewership.
Throughout numerous instances of Musk-related DOGE activity, the value of Dogecoin closely followed. Prior to Musk’s SNL appearance, DOGE saw a 700% surge, but when he failed to mention it in any of his skits to the disappointment of the DOGE Army, the coin fell 200%.
