American Keith Johnson has accused SpaceX and Tesla, and their head Elon Musk, of promoting the “cryptocurrency pyramid” Dogecoin (DOGE). The plaintiff seeks $258 billion in damages and compensation, according to Bloomberg.
“The defendants falsely and deceptively claim that Dogecoin is a legitimate investment, while the asset has no value,” the complaint filed in Manhattan federal court states.
According to the agency, Johnson seeks to represent a class of people who lost money trading or investing in DOGE since April 2019.
The plaintiff seeks $86 billion in damages and treble damages amounting to $172 billion. The investor asks that Musk and his companies be barred from promoting Dogecoin, and to declare that trading this cryptocurrency is a “gambling.”
Musk has been actively promoting the meme cryptocurrency. In April 2022, the entrepreneur proposed lowering the price of the Twitter Blue subscription and providing users the ability to pay for the premium service in DOGE.
In January, Tesla began selling merchandise for Dogecoin. Earlier the company sold its electric cars for Bitcoin, but later ceased offering this option.
Earlier in May, billionaire criticized Dogecoin co-founder Jackson Palmer. Musk said that the script to combat spam on Twitter, which the developer provided him several years ago, was poorly written.
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