The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) reportedly plans to investigate Tesla CEO Elon Musk. For his string of tweets regarding Dogecoin earlier this month.
The altcoin was launched in 2013 as mostly a joke and is named after an internet meme that surfaced nearly a decade ago. The joke centered around an image of a Shiba Inu dog with bad spelling habits (thus doge instead of dog).
Users can buy Dogecoin with a credit card on cryptocurrency exchanges and trading platforms, including Robinhood Markets Inc. A vocal group of buyers on Reddit have made it their mantra to push the token to $1.
Musk’s Twitter posts helped Dodgecoin’s value surge by more than 800 percent this year. On Wednesday, the price spiked again after he tweeted a photoshopped image of the cryptocurrency’s canine mascot. Planting a Dogecoin flag on the moon.
Musk also moved the market by claiming he bought some Dogecoin for his infant son. And raising concerns about “concentration” of the coin’s ownership.
SEC’s potential investigation into Musk was first reported by financial news service First Squawk. In response to the report, Musk welcomed a possible probe.
“I hope they do! It would be awesome,” he tweeted to one of his followers. Adding two emojis of a face crying with laughter.
Musk had previous run-ins with SEC
If an investigation does happen, it wouldn’t be Musk’s first run-in with the SEC. In September 2018, regulators fined him $20 million and forced him to step down as Tesla’s board chairman.
This came after Musk tweeted that he secured funding to take the electric-car maker private at $420 a share. The claim caused Tesla’s shares to surge, but Elon Musk never locked down any financing. Instead, the figure was in reference to marijuana culture.
At press time, Dogecoin is trading at $0.05135, a 2% increase. The plunge was directly related to the SEC’s potential investigation into Musk.
