Elon Musk – the South African billionaire behind companies like Tesla and SpaceX – played a last-minute April Fools’ joke and changed the Twitter logo (Twitter being the most recent company he bought) to that of the Dogecoin dog.
Elon Musk Pulls a Twitter Twist
The move aided Dogecoin and brought the coin up by more than 20 percent. The asset initially was trading at eight cents but moved up to ten cents respectively after the logo was altered.
The sudden change – no matter how brief it may have been – shouldn’t come as a surprise to most diehard crypto followers given how much of an advocate for Dogecoin Musk has been during the past several years. Not long ago, he referred to the currency as the “people’s crypto.” He also stated he’d like to literally leave a Dogecoin unit on the moon with one of his SpaceX rockets.
At the same time, while the maneuver may have led to short-term results (a small spike in the Dogecoin price), it may not be in Musk’s best interest right now to mess around with Dogecoin considering he’s currently involved in a $258 billion lawsuit over his promotion of the asset.
Last year, several investors (plaintiffs) got together and sued Musk, claiming that they invested in Dogecoin after they saw him speak positively about it again and again. They said they never would have invested in the asset if Musk hadn’t been so forthcoming about the altcoin, though they eventually gave in and clearly invested funds they didn’t have into the currency.
2022 was marred by a terrible bear market that saw many coins lose more than 70 percent of their value or more. This caused the crypto space to lose more than $2 trillion in overall valuation. It was a sad and ugly sight to see, and there were many traders that lost everything they had.
The plaintiffs named in the present case certainly lost quite a bit, and they say that Musk behaved irresponsibly in his promotion of Dogecoin. They are now suing him and hoping to obtain much of their missing money back.
Musk is being accused of a pump and dump, though his lawyers are asking that the case be rejected given that he did not force anyone to invest in the asset. Not everyone is impressed or convinced by this argument, however. Recently, comedian Jesse McLaren – commenting on the Twitter logo change – said:
Why do I get the feeling the Doge icon was added so when you search ‘Elon’ and ‘Doge’ the story of his racketeering lawsuit will be buried?
Manipulating the Asset?
Court documents regarding the case state the following:
Musk used his pedestal as [the] world’s richest man to operate and manipulate the Dogecoin pyramid scheme for profit, exposure and amusement.
