It is known that Elon Musk is a DogeCoin fan. It is also known that he likes to use Twitter to promote his assets. He did the same with DogeCoin. For that, he was sued for $258 billion by DogeCoin investors in 2022 for alleged market manipulation. Musk replaced Twitter’s traditional bird icon with an image of the Shiba Inu dog, the digital coin’s symbol. DogeCoin spiked more than 30% on Monday. Musk has again demonstratively and without restraint shown that he uses Twitter to manipulate.
The Shiba Inu dog is part of the logo of the DogeCoin blockchain and cryptocurrency, which was created as a joke in 2013 to mock other cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin.
On Friday, attorneys for Twitter and Elon Musk asked a federal judge to toss out a $258 billion lawsuit from 2022 (Johnson et al v. Musk et al, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York, No. 22-05037). that accused the billionaire of manipulating dogecoin’s price and driving it up over 36,000%. Musk didn’t make an explicit statement about the logo change but it seems clear that it’s a reference to the lawsuit.
Musk started touting dogecoin years ago. He periodically tweets about the token, created as a joke in 2013, predictably causing volatility each time. According to CoinMarketCap.com, DogeCoin is the eighth-most valuable cryptocurrency, with a market cap of almost $14 billion.
Musk’s lawyers described his public statements about the coin as “innocuous and often silly tweets,” in a court filing Friday.
