Elon Musk says never suggested people should invest in Dogecoin (2024)

NEW DELHI: At a forum, Tesla CEO Elon Musk rebuffed a suggestion that he himself had said people should invest in Dogecoin. This rejection came at a time Musk is sued for $258 billion by a Dogecoin investor, who accused him of running a pyramid scheme to support the cryptocurrency.

At the Qatar Economic Forum in Doha, Musk told Bloomberg News Editor-in-Chief John Micklethwait that he supported Dogecoin as people encouraged him to do so.

Musk, the Bloomberg report suggested, rebuffed the suggestion that he himself had said people should invest. He pledged to support Dogecoin, "as some of his employees asked him to."

He told Bloomberg that SpaceX and Tesla did buy some Bitcoin, but it is a small percentage of total cash and near-cash assets.

Musk told Bloomberg that he also bought some Dogecoin and that Tesla accepts Dogecoin for some merchandise, and "SpaceX will do the same."

Tesla in February 2021 said it had bought $1.5 billion of bitcoin and for a short time accepted it as payment for vehicles.

“And I intend to personally support Dogecoin because I just know a lot of people who are not that wealthy who, you know, have encouraged me to buy and support Dogecoin,” he told Bloomberg.

In a complaint filed in federal court in Manhattan, plaintiff Keith Johnson accused Musk, electric car company Tesla Inc (TSLA.O) and space tourism company SpaceX of racketeering for touting Dogecoin and driving up its price, only to then let the price tumble, Reuters reported last week.

The complaint said Dogecoin's selloff began around the time Musk hosted the NBC show "Saturday Night Live and, playing a fictitious financial expert on a "Weekend Update" segment, called Dogecoin "a hustle."

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