Billionaire Elon Musk, alongside together with his corporations SpaceX and Tesla Inc, are all being sued for an astonishing $258 billion in damages for being “engaged in a crypto pyramid scheme” involving Dogecoin (DOGE).

The damages sought are greater than 34 occasions Dogecoin’s present market cap of $7.5 billion and almost 3 times its ATH market cap of $88.68 billion in mid-2021.

Filed within the New York District Court by an legal professional at Evan Spencer Legislation on Thursday, the class-action lawsuit alleges that Musk “used his pedestal as World’s Richest man to function and manipulate the Dogecoin Pyramid Scheme for revenue, publicity, and amusement.”

Within the submitting, plaintiff Keith Johnson, a U.S. citizen, alleges that Musk and his companies had been “unjustly enriched” by $86 billion on account of wire fraud, playing enterprise, false promoting, misleading practices, and different illegal conduct.

Johnson claims that he and others within the class-action have misplaced roughly $86 billion between Could 2021 and June 2022 and is demanding that determine in financial damages together with one other $172 billion in damages and costs.

Defendant Musk is the self-appointed ‘Dogefather,’ ‘former CEO of Dogecoin,’ accomplice, developer, spokesperson, publicist, salesman, marketer, and promoter of Dogecoin, who assembled the ‘Doge Military’ together with his companies and numerous billionaires, influencers, and celebrities to extend the worth, market cap and buying and selling quantity of Dogecoin.”

In January, Musk introduced that his electrical automobile firm Telsa would settle for Dogecoin as fee for the corporate’s merchandise. In Could, he introduced that Dogecoin funds would even be accepted by his house exploration firm SpaceX.

The lawsuit additionally calls for an order declaring the buying and selling of Dogecoin to be constituted as playing inside New York and federal regulation, and in addition alleges that Musk and his corporations have violated state and federal playing legal guidelines.

“Since Plaintiff and the category weren’t suggested that the buying and selling of Dogecoin was nothing greater than a playing enterprise, Plaintiff and the category demand the return of all wagers misplaced buying and selling Dogecoin.”

It additionally seeks to order Musk and his corporations, and every other unlicensed professionals from promoting, advertising and marketing, or selling Dogecoin sooner or later.

Group reacts

The crypto neighborhood has ridiculed the lawsuit.

Dogecoin’s dad and mom are preventing: Musk and Jackson Palmer alternate barbs

Dogecoin creator Shibetoshi Nakamoto, a Tweet of whose was cited within the lawsuit as supporting proof, known as the lawsuit “silly as fuck” on Twitter on Thursday, however admitted that crypto buying and selling isn’t a lot completely different from playing.

i imply dogecoin is identical as all the pieces else, they wanna make all crypto into playing?

the lawsuit is clearly silly as fuck, however i don’t assume crypto buying and selling is way completely different than playing

— Shibetoshi Nakamoto (@BillyM2k) June 16, 2022

Rahul Sood, CEO, and co-founder of Irreverent Labs, which builds blockchain video games known as it a “silly class-action lawsuit”

“Superb that within the US somebody might launch such a silly class-action lawsuit. These guys all knew what they had been stepping into. Ridiculous.”

Ron Coleman, a business litigator and accomplice at Dhillon Legislation Group with 196,000 Twitter followers replied to a Tweet in regards to the information, noting that “anybody can say something in a lawsuit.”

Anybody can say something in a lawsuit

— Ron Coleman (@RonColeman) June 16, 2022