Taking the witness stand in a federal courthouse in downtown Oakland, Elon Musk did not mince words when it came to crypto.
During his closely watched testimony in his high-stakes lawsuit against OpenAI, the centibillionaire and the self-proclaimed “Dogefather” stated that most cryptocurrencies are, in fact, scams.
According to reporting from the courtroom by New York Times journalist Mike Isaac, Musk’s remarks were in response to early internal emails revealing that OpenAI had once considered holding an initial coin offering (ICO) to fund the company. Back then, this highly speculative fundraising method was en vogue.
A fickle crypto advocate
Musk’s relationship with cryptocurrency has been rather fickle. It has been vacillating between skepticism and fervent support.
His initial public comments on crypto were mixed. However, he became deeply involved in crypto by persistently tweeting about Dogecoin (DOGE), a meme-inspired cryptocurrency. In April 2019, he tweeted, “Dogecoin might be my fav cryptocurrency. It’s pretty cool.” By late 2020, single-word tweets from Musk were enough to send the token’s price soaring. In February 2021, Tesla shocked the financial world by announcing it had purchased $1.5 billion in Bitcoin. In May 2021, however, Musk abruptly announced that Tesla would suspend Bitcoin payments. Simultaneously, Musk embraced the title of “The Dogefather,” and kept hyping up the token on Saturday Night Live.
In August 2024, Musk and Tesla won the dismissal of a federal lawsuit that had accused them of defrauding investors and manipulating Dogecoin’s price.
A high-stakes trial
The trial, Musk v. Altman et al., poses a significant risk to OpenAI’s plans for a potential $1 trillion IPO. It could potentially reshape the current AI industry.
Musk, who provided roughly $38 million in seed funding to help launch OpenAI in 2015, is suing the company, its CEO Sam Altman, and President Greg Brockman. He has alleged that OpenAI has deceptively turned into a for-profit “wealth machine” instead of being a non-profit that was supposed to benefit humanity. Musk is seeking $150 billion in damages while demanding that OpenAI’s corporate structure be reverted to its original nonprofit status.
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