‘I Am’ Buying—Elon Musk Reveals Surprise Crypto Bet Amid $2 Trillion Bitcoin, Ethereum,

Bitcoin
BTC
, ethereum and other major cryptocurrenices have crashed this year, with around $2 trillion erased from the combined market capitalization in a matter of months.

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The bitcoin price has this weekend fallen below $20,000 per bitcoin, a milestone bitcoin first passed in late 2017 before falling into a multi-year bear market that some fear could be about to happen again. Ethereum and other top ten cryptocurrencies BNB
BNB
, XRP
XRP
, solana, cardano and dogecoin have also crashed back.

Now, Tesla
TSLA
billionaire Elon Musk, who was this week hit by a $258 billion lawsuit over his support of dogecoin, has said he is still buying the joke bitcoin rival and will continue to support it.

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“I will keep supporting dogecoin,” Musk, who last year revealed he personally owns dogecoin, bitcoin and ethereum, posted to Twitter, repling to one commentor that told him to “keep buying” it, “I am.”

Last month, Musk’s rocket company SpaceX followed his electric car company Tesla in adopting dogecoin payments, allowing customers to buy merchandise using dogecoin.

“You’ve always been earnest about supporting the coin for what I consider the right reasons—you find it amusing, appreciate the satire and irony, and you think it has potential as a currency—and your companies accept it for merch, giving it more utility,” dogecoin co-creator Billy Markus, who Musk has credited as being one of the reasons that “people love dogeoin,” replied to Musk’s statement of support.

As last year’s huge bitcoin, ethereum and crypto bull run pushed prices to blistering highs, Musk—who was voted “dogecoin CEO” in a joke Twitter poll in 2019 and adopted the moniker “The Dogefather”—repeatedly called on dogecoin developers to upgrade the cryptocurrency in order to “beat bitcoin hands down.”

The dogecoin price rocketed into the crypto top ten last year after fading into relative obscurity, helped by Musk and other high-profile investors such as Mark Cuban. The dogecoin price peaked at over 70 cents ahead of Musk’s appearance on the comedy sketch show Saturday Night Live and has since collapsed to just 5 cents, down more than 90%.

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Earlier this week, Musk and his companies Tesla and SpaceX were hit with a $258 billion lawsuit claiming they are part of a racketeering scheme to pump the dogecoin price.

“[Musk, Tesla and SpaceX] falsely and deceptively claim that dogecoin is a legitimate investment when it has no value at all,” Keith Johnson, described as “an American citizen who was defrauded out of money by defendants’ dogecoin crypto pyramid scheme,” wrote in the complaint.

“[Dogecoin
DOGE
is] simply a fraud whereby ‘greater fools’ are deceived into buying the coin at a higher price,” the lawsuit read before going on to list Musk’s multiple tweets and public statements that have pushed up the dogecoin price over the last 18 months.

In early 2021, Musk sent the bitcoin price sharply higher when it was revealed Tesla had bought $1.5 billion worth of bitcoin.