Tesla CEO Elon Musk is reportedly beneath SEC scrutiny once more, and this time, it’s over some alleged cryptocurrency manipulation, particularly Dogecoin.
Tesla, Elon Musk, and the SEC
Musk and the SEC have had a number of run-ins with one another, and it was hardly ever with an excellent final result.
Most famously, the SEC filed a lawsuit against Musk over his infamous “funding secured” comment concerning his failed try and take Tesla non-public again in 2018.
The Safety and Change Fee (SEC) judged that Musk exaggerated when saying that the funding was “secured”:
Musk went on a marketing campaign in opposition to the SEC, calling them names and claiming that they have been working for individuals shorting the electrical automaker.
Tesla and Musk ended up reaching a settlement with the SEC.
As a part of the settlement, Musk agreed to step down from the function of Chairman of the board, and each Tesla and Musk needed to every pay $20 million fines.
The CEO presumably didn’t need Tesla to need to pay for his subject with the SEC, and whereas he couldn’t instantly pay for Tesla’s a part of the high quality, he determined to buy $20 million worth of shares from Tesla.
That method, he type of not directly ended up paying for Tesla’s high quality – although he additionally ended up with ~71,000 extra Tesla shares within the course of.
As we beforehand reported, Musk ended up actually making money from the settlement because of Tesla’s inventory value surging final yr.
SEC now goes after Musk for Dogecoin
Recently, Musk has been speaking quite a bit about cryptocurrency. Beforehand, the expertise didn’t appear to curiosity him a lot, however he now believes that it’s a minimum of “a bit of higher” than fiat cash.
His curiosity in cryptocurrency culminated into Tesla buying $1.5 billion worth of bitcoins last month.
Whereas Tesla invested into bitcoins, Musk says that he’s a giant fan of Dogecoin, which truly began as a joke.
The above picture depicts Dogecoin’s brand on the moon, which is a reference to a meme typically used within the Dogecoin group concerning the coin going “to the moon” as in rising in worth tremendously.
Musk has been tweeting about Dogecoin quite a bit this week, and whereas his tweets would possibly sound like jokes, they’ve been very influential and helped enhance the worth of the coin by over 500% within the final month:
It began as a meme, however the cryptocurrency has now a market capitalization price over $6 billion.
When requested about why he likes Dogecoin, Musk merely answered that he “loves canine and memes.”
Tesla’s CEO additionally mentioned that he arrange Dogecoin mining rigs along with his youngsters final weekend.
Now, monetary newswire First Squawk reviews that the SEC is getting concerned and searching into Musk for potential safety violations concerning Dogecoin:
Presumably, they’d be him utilizing his influential Twitter account to control the value of the Dogecoin – just like what occurred with Tesla again in 2018.
Electrek’s Take
That’s fairly loopy.
If that is correct, the US authorities is wanting into Elon for tweeting a few meme cryptocurrrency.
That’s 2021 now.
To be truthful, I perceive the way it seems on the floor for SEC. Dogecoin had a reasonably small market cap, and Elon’s affect can simply transfer it, and it seems prefer it did.
However did Elon or potential co-conspirators actually had a major Dogecoin place and tremendously benefited from these tweets?
In some way I doubt that one of many richest males on earth determined that it might be a great way to make more cash.
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