The CEO of Twitter and Tesla has been accused of insider trading and manipulating the price of Dogecoin in a proposed class action lawsuit.

Axar.az reports that investors are claiming(opens in a new tab) that Musk used his influence on Twitter, TV appearances, and paid online influencers to trade profitably at the expense of other investors.

Musk has been very vocal about Dogecoin for years now, often causing spikes in Dogecoin's price. For example, in 2019 he said Dogecoin was his favourite currency. He also spoke favourably about Dogecoin on SNL, he said he would launch a satellite named Doge-1 to the moon, and at one point he considered allowing customers to buy Tesla cars using Doge.

Saying and doing all that is one thing, but using his massive online influence to pump Doge and then actually profit from it, which is what the lawsuit claims, is another.

A Wednesday night filing in Manhattan federal court claims that Musk, for example, sold roughly $124 million worth of Dogecoin in April after he replaced Twitter's logo with Dogecoin's logo, which led to a 30 per cent increase in Dogecoin's price. According to the filing, Musk went on a "deliberate course of carnival barking, market manipulation and insider trading" in order to defraud investors. In all, the complaint claims Musk had intentionally driven the price of Dogecoin up by over 36,000 per cent over several years, and then let it crash.