ChainCatcher News: 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 accuse the world's richest man of using Twitter posts, a 2021 appearance on NBC's "Saturday Night Live" and other publicity stunts to profit at investors' expense through multiple Dogecoin wallets controlled by him or Tesla. They also say Musk deliberately drove the price of Dogecoin up more than 36,000% over two years before allowing it to plummet, and that he and Tesla often timed transactions based on Musk's public statements and activities about Dogecoin.
However, Hellerstein said Musk's tweets about Dogecoin being the future currency of 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 them to bring a securities fraud lawsuit, making the market manipulation and insider trading allegations made by investors "incomprehensible." 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 silly 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.
