Tesla boss Elon Musk is guilty of insider trading against his followers using Dogecoin (DOGE), alleged memecoin investors in a court filing against the tech entrepreneur on Wednesday. 

The accusations are a follow-up to a $258 billion class action lawsuit filed by the same group in June 2022, accusing Musk and his companies of causing hundreds of billions in losses for Dogecoin holders.   

Elon Musk Dogecoin Agenda

Per the amended filing in a Manhattan federal court on May 31, Elon Musk engaged in “a deliberate course of carnival barking market manipulation,” through a “publicity circus” intended to pump Dogecoin’s price. 

These stunts include his public appearances and social media activity hyping up  Dogecoin dating back to April 2019. These stunts boosted Dogecoin’s price by 36,000% to $0.70+ by May 2021. Today, DOGE trades 90% down from that high. 

“Musk’s pretense that promotion of Dogecoin was just well-meaning fun—not meant to be taken seriously—is not credible,” read the filing, labeling the tycoon an “apex predator,” and his millions of Twitter followers as prey. 

The lawsuit noted that numerous studies have already demonstrated the effect of Elon Musk’s tweets on the price of Dogecoin. Indeed, Musk’s announcements that he would begin accepting Dogecoin at SpaceX in 2021, and his visit to Twitter HQ after taking over the company last year, have each contributed to DOGE’s changing price. 

Musk exercised his influence again by changing Twitter’s blue bird logo to a picture of the Doge meme’s Shiba I