Elon Musk sued for $258 billion over dogecoin assist | World News

An investor in dogecoin, initially created as a joke however whose worth elevated and fell because it was promoted by Elon Musk, filed a $258 billion lawsuit Thursday towards the billionaire and his firms Tesla and SpaceX.

Keith Johnson, who says he misplaced cash after investing in dogecoin, described himself as an "American citizen who was defrauded" by what he referred to as a "Dogecoin Crypto Pyramid Scheme."

He's asking for his movement, filed in a New York courtroom, to be categorized as a category motion swimsuit on behalf of those that have suffered losses by investing in dogecoin since 2019.

Since Musk started selling the digital foreign money, traders have misplaced round $86 billion, Johnson estimates. He would love Musk to reimburse traders this sum, plus pay double that in damages -- a further $172 billion.

Based in 2013, dogecoin's creators say it was meant as an ironic response to 2 huge web phenomena: cryptocurrencies equivalent to bitcoin, and a meme picture of a Shiba Inu canine.

The worth of dogecoin traded at simply fractions of a cent for many of its existence.

Nevertheless it noticed its worth leap initially of 2021, rising to $0.73 in Could of that 12 months, amid a shopping for frenzy that surrounded the GameStop saga and after humorous messages about it from Musk.

On Thursday, nevertheless, it was value lower than six cents.

Johnson mentioned he believes Musk elevated "the worth, market cap and buying and selling quantity of Dogecoin" via his promotion of it.

He included tweets from Musk, the world's richest man who has greater than 98 million followers on Twitter, together with one promising that SpaceX would "put a literal Dogecoin on the literal moon."

Johnson named Musk's Tesla electrical carmaker within the swimsuit because it accepts dogecoin as cost for sure by-product merchandise. SpaceX was additionally included for having named one in every of its satellites after dogecoin.

Johnson likened dogecoin to a pyramid scheme because the digital foreign money has no intrinsic worth neither is it a product. Moreover it's not backed by a tangible asset and the variety of "cash" is limitless.

Fits by traders who really feel cheated by the guarantees of digital foreign money are on the rise within the United Sates.