Musk wins lawsuit accusing him of manipulating Dogecoin price

Musk and his electric car company Tesla (TSLA.O) have successfully won a federal lawsuit accusing them of defrauding investors of billions of dollars by inflating the value of the cryptocurrency Dogecoin and engaging in insider trading. U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein in Manhattan issued the ruling late Thursday. Investors accused the world's richest man of using Twitter posts, a 2021 appearance on NBC's "Saturday Night Live" and other publicity stunts to trade profitably at investors' expense through multiple Dogecoin wallets controlled by him or Tesla. They also said Musk intentionally drove the price of Dogecoin up more than 36,000% over two years before letting it plummet, and that he and Tesla often timed trades based on Musk's public statements and activities about Dogecoin. However, Hellerstein said Musk's tweets about "Dogecoin being the future currency of the Earth, which can be used to buy Tesla cars, or sent to the moon by his company SpaceX" were "idealistic and exaggerated, not true, and easily falsified," meaning no rational investor could rely on those tweets to bring a securities fraud lawsuit, making it "incomprehensible" that investors were making allegations of market manipulation and insider trading. Hellerstein dismissed the lawsuit with prejudice, meaning it cannot be filed again. The investors initially sought $258 billion in damages and amended their complaint four times in two years. In seeking to dismiss the lawsuit, Musk's lawyers said there was nothing wrong with his "harmless and often stupid tweets." They also said there was no evidence that Musk had two wallets for suspicious transactions, or that he or Tesla had ever sold Dogecoin. (Reuters)