Elon Musk supports buying Dogecoin

New Delhi: As all the leading cryptocurrencies get hammered, Tesla CEO Elon Musk has said he will keep supporting and buying Dogecoin, a cryptocurrency he has been vouching about for years. Amid the 'crypto winter', Dogecoin digital currency has tumbled from its high of nearly $0.74 to just over $0.05 in recent days. In a tweet on Sunday, Musk said: "I will keep supporting Dogecoin."

Reacting to a follower who asked him to keep buying Dogecoin too, Musk replied that he will keep purchasing the cryptocurrency. Called 'Dogefather', Musk has long been a vocal proponent of Dogecoin and tweeted several times in the past to help spike the price of the digital token.

Last week, a Dogecoin cryptocurrency investor in the US sued Musk, Tesla and SpaceX for $258 billion for allegedly operating an illegal racketeering enterprise to inflate the price of Dogecoin.

A class-action lawsuit was filed in a federal court in Manhattan, and the Dogecoin investor called for triple the damages of $86 billion, which is how much the plaintiff alleges has been lost by Dogecoin investors since Musk started tweeting about it, according to reports.

"Defendants falsely and deceptively claim that Dogecoin is a legitimate investment when it has no value at all," the plaintiff Keith Johnson said in the complaint. "Since Defendant Musk and his corporations SpaceX and Tesla, Inc began purchasing, developing, promoting, supporting and operating Dogecoin in 2019, Plaintiff and the class have lost approximately $86 billion in this Crypto Pyramid Scheme," he added.

Earlier this year, Musk announced that the company's supercharging stations will accept cryptocurrency Dogecoin as payment. Tesla does accept Dogecoin in its online store and there have been rumours of Tesla eventually accepting the crypto as a form of payment for its vehicles. Musk has a significant personal investment into Bitcoin on top of Tesla's investment and he has smaller Ethereum and Dogecoin Holdings.