Golden Finance reported that according to Reuters, Elon Musk and his electric car company Tesla (TSLA.O) successfully won the dismissal of a federal lawsuit that accused them of defrauding investors by exaggerating the value of the cryptocurrency Dogecoin and engaging in insider trading, causing billions of dollars in losses. U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein in Manhattan issued the ruling on Thursday evening. Investors accused the world's richest man of using Twitter posts, an appearance on NBC's "Saturday Night Live" in 2021 and other publicity stunts to make profitable transactions at the expense of investors' losses through multiple Dogecoin wallets controlled by him or Tesla. They also said that Musk deliberately pushed the price of Dogecoin up by more than 36,000% in two years and then let it plummet, and that he and Tesla often arranged trading times based on Musk's public statements and activities about Dogecoin. However, Hellerstein said Musk's tweets about "Dogecoin is the future currency of the earth, can be used to buy Tesla cars, or be sent to the moon by his company SpaceX" are "idealistic and exaggerated, not true, and easily forged," which means that no rational investor can rely on these tweets to file a securities fraud lawsuit, and therefore "cannot understand" the market manipulation and insider trading allegations made by investors. Hellerstein dismissed the lawsuit with prejudice, which means 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.
