DOGE Soars High as Elon Musk Requests $258 Billion Dogecoin Cancelled
As measured by market cap, Dogecoin, the biggest meme cryptocurrency, rocketed to a five-week high of $0.085 on Sunday after lawyers for Elon Musk asked a Manhattan court to dismiss a $258 billion lawsuit filed by DOGE investors against the billionaire.
Lawyers for Musk characterized the case as a “fantastic work of fiction” during a court hearing on Friday. They claim it was intended to smear Musk and blackmail him using “innocent and often stupid tweets” about Dogecoin. Lawyers said previous claims such as “Dogecoin Rulz” and “no highs, no lows, just Doge” do not hold up fraud charges, saying Musk’s accusers had failed to show how the Tesla CEO intended to mislead anyone.
According to Musk’s lawyers, there’s nothing illegal about the urge to tweet for or humorous pictures of a real cryptocurrency that still has a market cap close to $10 billion. Lawyers also dispute claims that Dogecoin meets the criteria of a security.
Musk was sued in June last year after investors claimed he operated a pyramid scheme to sustain the meme cryptocurrency, driving up its price by more than 36,000% over two years before crashing. The plaintiffs further argue that the “false and misleading statement by the defendants that Dogecoin is a genuine investment when it has no value at all” caused them to lose their investment.
Musk’s attorney, Evan Spencer, voiced optimism for victory in an email to Reuters, saying that “we are more confident than ever that our case will succeed.” But despite the legal action, Musk didn’t falter and actually stepped up his support for the cryptocurrency. Musk tweeted “I will continue to support Dogecoin” after the lawsuit was filed, adding that he also bought it. Musk has been a staunch advocate for the Dogecoin ecosystem, often choosing it over rivals such as Bitcoin.
Previously, the billionaire expressed his openness to accept Dogecoin as payment for services other than Tesla and SpaceX products and encouraged people to offer their ideas for improving Dogecoin. On the other hand, investors continue to increase their cryptocurrency holdings. According to data from Santiment, addresses that have more than 10 million DOGE have added 1.47 billion coins since January 1, for a total of $123.1 million.
At the time of publication, DOGE was trading at $0.079, up more than 8% over the previous 48 hours. Crypto expert “Ali Charts” believes that after breaking the crucial resistance at $0.07800, the price is likely to retest that area, which might lead to a 20% rise towards $0.093.
