Musk was accused of operating the ＂dogecoin pyramid scheme＂ and was claimed 1.7 trillion yuan.

　　On June 16th, local time, elon musk, the world’s richest man, and his subsidiary Tesla and SpaceX, a space exploration technology company, were sued by an American dogecoin investor, demanding compensation of US$ 258 billion (about RMB 1.7 trillion). The prosecutor claimed that he was deceived by the "cryptocurrency pyramid scam", and Musk and his company were the participants and supporters of the "scam".

　　▲ elon musk

　　According to reports, the dogecoin investor named Keith Johnson filed a lawsuit in Manhattan Federal Court on 16th. He said that Musk and the two companies directly "manipulated" the price of dogecoin, deliberately "touted" dogecoin on Twitter and raised the price, but now they have been plummeting.

　　"The defendant (Musk and his company) falsely and fraudulently claimed that dogecoin is a legitimate investment, but it has no value at all." Johnson said in the lawsuit. "The defendant realized that dogecoin has no value since 2019, but continued to promote dogecoin to profit from it. Musk used his position as the richest man in the world to manipulate dogecoin ‘ Pyramid scam ’ For profit, exposure and entertainment. "

　　Johnson said that he hoped to prevent Musk and the company from promoting dogecoin through legal channels, and urged the court to declare that the dogecoin transaction was actually a form of gambling according to federal and new york laws. At present, Musk has not responded to the prosecution, and the legal advisers of Tesla and SpaceX have not responded.

　　Johnson said that in this class action lawsuit, he will represent all investors who have lost money in dogecoin trading since April 2019, and demand the defendant to compensate for the loss of $86 billion — — It is roughly equivalent to the market value of dogecoin’s decline since May last year, plus twice the compensation of $172 billion.

　　It is reported that the price in dogecoin has dropped by about 67% this year, and the trading price on 16th was slightly lower than 6 cents, which was far from the peak of 74 cents last year. According to the complaint, dogecoin’s selling began when Musk appeared on the American variety show "saturday night live" in May last year. At that time, Musk called dogecoin "a scam" on the show.

　　▲ Musk promoted dogecoin on Twitter.

　　Since then, Musk launched dogecoin’s "rescue" campaign on Twitter, announcing that SpaceX would take dogecoin to the moon. In March this year, he also said that he would not sell dogecoin and Bitcoin, even though their value had evaporated by billions of dollars.

　　It is reported that dogecoin is a cryptocurrency. In 2013, two software engineers, Marcus and Palmer, invented this kind of digital currency by using Doge, a dog expression pack on the popular Internet, which was originally used to satirize Bitcoin. At first, dogecoin had no value and was mainly used as a reward currency for Reddit, an American social information forum. Later, it gradually went out of the circle and its value was raised. Among them, Musk is constantly supporting the cryptocurrency with high profile, and he once called himself "the father of dogecoin".

　　Red Star journalist Ding Wen