The plaintiffs point to Musk’s 2021 appearance on Saturday Night Live, where he played “a fictional financial expert” and called Dogecoin a “fraud,” causing its price to drop dramatically minutes later.

Elon Musk and his lawyers have reportedly asked a U.S. judge to dismiss a $258 billion lawsuit filed by investors who accuse him of running a pyramid scheme to promote the cryptocurrency Dogecoin

Elon Musk’s lawyers said the lawsuit filed by Dogecoin investors against Musk in June 2022 was a “fictional work of fiction” filed in Manhattan federal court on March 31, Reuters reported on April 1.

Musk’s lawyers explained that his support for Dogecoin on social media, including comments such as “Dogecoin Rulz” and “No highs, no lows, just Doge,” were “too vague” to constitute a fraud claim. The lawyers stated:

“There is nothing illegal about tweeting a statement or a funny picture in support of a legitimate cryptocurrency with a market cap of nearly $10 billion.”

Musk’s lawyers have called his Dogecoin announcements “harmless and generally silly tweets” in a bid to convince a judge to “dismiss” a multi-billion dollar lawsuit.

Musk is accused of “driving the price of Dogecoin up by more than 36,000% over two years and then causing it to crash,” with the initial filing last year alleging that he “used his position as the world’s richest man to operate and manipulate the Dogecoin pyramid scheme.”

The investors reportedly cited Musk’s May 2021 appearance on Saturday Night Live , where he played “a fictional financial expert” and called Dogecoin “a scam,” as a reference point for the lawsuit.

Minutes after the TV show appeared, DOGE’s price plummeted by more than 25%, falling from a high of $0.66 at the start of the show to $0.50.

Following his television appearance, Musk appeared to make a number of efforts to reignite enthusiasm for Dogecoin.

A few days later, he told his Twitter followers that he was working with “Doge developers to make the system more efficient,” which could be “promising.”

During the market crash in March 2022, Musk told his Twitter followers that he would not sell his crypto assets, including Bitcoin Ether $1,827 and Governor. Evan Spencer, a lawyer representing the investors, reportedly said in an email that “we are more confident than ever that our case will succeed.”