Elon Musk, who has repeatedly expressed his admiration for meme cryptocurrency dogecoin, is now facing a US$258bn racketeering lawsuit due to his involvement with the cryptocurrency.
Seven new plaintiffs and six new defendants have recently been added to the US$258bn dogecoin lawsuit.
Several companies, including Musk's electric car company Tesla Inc (NASDAQ:TSLA), his space tourism company SpaceX, his tunnel construction business The Boring Company and Musk himself have been accused of intentionally driving up the price of dogecoin by over 36,000% for more than two years, according to an amended complaint filed in a Manhattan federal court.
Following a stellar performance, Musk and his companies allegedly allowed dogecoin to crash, according to the amended complaint.
While it has resulted in the defendants reportedly making profits "tens of billions of dollars" at the expense of other dogecoin investors, the currency's value "depended solely on marketing," according to the complaint.
A lawsuit was originally filed in June.
According to the amended complaint, Musk, the world's richest person, tweeted shortly thereafter that he would continue to support Dogecoin, and said in an interview that "people that work around the factory at SpaceX or Tesla" had inquired about his support.
Dogecoin Foundation, a nonprofit providing governance and support for Dogecoin, is a new defendant.
The US$258bn damage estimate is three times Dogecoin's market value decline since May 2021.
In May 2021, Dogecoin traded at around 74c. On September 7, it traded at about 6c.