Elon Musk trolls SEC… again

Elon Musk seems serious about angering the United States Security and Exchanges Commission with his memes. Despite the rumors about the regulators investigating his Dogecoin-promoting tweets, he posted another relevant meme on March 1, claiming that his memes have protected $DOGE’s price.

That references a tweet sent on Feb. 25 by financial news service First Squawk, suggesting that the SEC is investigating Musk over his tweets concerning Dogecoin (DOGE). Dogecoin—first created as a joke cryptocurrency dedicated to the meme image of a shiba inu—is clearly the billionaire’s favorite crypto asset.

The tech tycoon and world’s second-richest person is Dogecoin hodlers favorite booster, with the coin receiving a big boost several times in recent months, including Feb. 10 after the Tesla tycoon tweeted that he had bought his son X Æ A-12 some Dogecoin so he could be a “toddler hodler.” 

Musk, who was slapped with a $40 million fine and forced to step down as Tesla’s chairman in 2018 by a very unamused SEC after a marijuana-themed joke tweet that he was taking his electric car company Tesla private at $420 moved markets.

While Musk appeased the SEC at the time, he’s clearly not repentant. 

In a Feb. 25 tweet responding to First Squawk’s report, Musk suggested that it would be great if he ended up being investigated by the United States regulator over the memes he posts about memecoin Dogecoin on Twitter.

“I hope they do! It would be awesome” he replied to a fan’s tweet, which said: “The SEC investigating dog memes sent by a memer about a memecoin is peak 2021.”

Not that Musk’s tweets are always good for DOGE. On Feb. 15, the price tanked after he suggested that he believes “too much concentration” of wealth among Dogecoin holders is the only issue holding the coin back. After that, he said that he would support major DOGE holders who sell their coins, even going as far as offering to pay them saying that he would “literally pay actual $ if [major Dogecoin holders] just void their accounts.”

But it’s not just DOGE that the tycoon’s tweets move. At the end of January he changed his Twitter bio to one word—#Bitcoin—which pumped BTC’s price dramatically.

All this has caused some real concerns. A week before the concentration-of-wealth tweet undercut Dogecoin’s price, Blockchain Research Lab released a report questioning whether influencers like Musk should tweet about cryptocurrencies, noting that if “a single tweet can potentially lead to an increase of $111 billion in Bitcoin’s market capitalization, a different tweet could also wipe out a similar value.”

Musk apparently likes Bitcoin much less than he does Dogecoin. About two weeks ago, he defined Bitcoin “a less dumb form of liquidity than cash” and added, “when fiat currency has negative real interest, only a fool wouldn’t look elsewhere. […] Bitcoin is almost as bs as fiat money. The key word is ‘almost.’”

While he shows much more support for Dogecoin than he does for Bitcoin, his company has done the opposite. Tesla invested $1.5 billion in Bitcoin at the beginning of February, and announced that it will accept the cryptocurrency for car payments. Which sent BTC’s price to a new all-time high.

Meanwhile, little X isn’t the only member of Musk’s family getting in on the crypto boom. The toddler hodler’s mother, musician Grimes, sold nearly $6 million worth of non-fungible token (NFT) art on Nifty Gateway on Feb. 28. 

She joined an NFT art goldrush that has been led by digital artist Beeple. One of his works was resold for $6.6 million on Nifty Gateway on Feb. 24.