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Elon Musk and Dogecoin: How the Billionaire Became the ‘Dogefather’

by admin September 28, 2025

With Dogecoin making a comeback late last year and early into 2025, some may be pondering: Where did the asset come from? What’s it for? And what’s Tesla CEO Elon Musk got to do with it?

The original meme coin’s boom largely has the world’s richest man to thank. Musk’s obsession with shitposting helped boost the coin to a top 10 cryptocurrency.

It’s been a wacky ride over the past few years, culminating in Musk’s appointment to lead a government agency called DOGE—yes, really. But we’ll explain it all.

2018: What the DOGE?

Dogecoin is the biggest and oldest meme coin and the second-biggest proof-of-work cryptocurrency. It was created in 2013 as a joke by developers Billy Markus and Jackson Palmer.

The idea was to poke fun at the huge number of altcoins and crypto projects entering the market following Bitcoin’s rapid ascent, and the coin enjoyed relative obscurity and a low price during its early years.

But then along came Musk. The eccentric billionaire asked Palmer in a 2018 tweet to help with the Twitter bot problem. Scammers had created a number of fake high-profile accounts, including Musk’s, in order to push crypto cons. The scams typically posted fake Ethereum giveaways.

It was the first real interest Musk had shown in Dogecoin.

2019: The pump begins

Musk started to pump Dogecoin the next year. “Dogecoin might be my fav cryptocurrency,” he wrote in April 2019, in response to a screenshot of a poll from the official Dogecoin account asking who should be the cryptocurrency’s CEO. “It’s pretty cool.”

The post would be the first of many to cause the asset’s value to rocket upwards. Soon after Musk’s first tweet about Dogecoin, the market cap of the coin hit $400 million and crypto exchange Huobi listed it.

Musk being Musk, however, didn’t stop there: He branded himself Dogecoin’s CEO—briefly—on Twitter before continuing to fire out tweets asking if the coin is “really a valid form of currency” or posting memes associated with the original dog-coin.

2020/2021: Bull run arrives

Musk continued to pump Dogecoin’s price here and there with his tweets, but things really got started during the 2021 bull run. Major exchanges like Coinbase Pro listed Dogecoin and the asset developed a bigger cult following, not to mention growing mainstream awareness.

DOGE gained a market cap bigger than many companies in the S&P 500. And developers exclusively told Decrypt that they had secretly been working with Musk since 2019 to make the coin a valid payment method and a greener, cheaper alternative to Bitcoin.

But things got stranger when Musk called himself the “Dogefather” ahead of a “Saturday Night Live” skit about the cryptocurrency—again sending the asset’s price roaring upwards. DOGE would jump to its all-time high price of about $0.73 at this time.

Musk’s “SNL” appearance ended up being underwhelming for Doge fans, with the SpaceX boss and his mother’s allusions to the coin ultimately pushing its price down. Still, it continued to bring the strange world of meme coins to the mainstream.

Later that year, Musk announced that his rocket company, SpaceX, would launch a satellite to the moon—completely funded by the cryptocurrency.

2022: Tesla/Twitter mania

The Doge mania continued into 2022 when Musk’s car company started accepting Dogecoin for merchandise.

Dogecoin continued to experience price bumps when Musk bought Twitter and rebranded it to X, hinting that it would also become a payments platform that might, eventually, integrate the O.G. meme coin.

Things came back to bite Musk later that year, though, when an American man hit the billionaire and Tesla and SpaceX with a $258 billion lawsuit for allegedly pumping Dogecoin—an asset with “no value at all,” according to the original filing.

But Musk and his lawyers scored a win in 2024 when a judge sided with them and dismissed the lawsuit, calling the tech entrepreneur’s tweets about Dogecoin “aspirational and puffery,” and noting that “no reasonable investor could rely upon them.”

2024-2025: Trump, Musk, and DOGE

Dogecoin had a relatively quiet 2023, but the meme coin has soared over the last year following Musk’s support of Republican Donald Trump’s campaign for the White House.

That’s mostly because Trump said that Musk would lead a government efficiency commission ahead of being voted back into the seat of power; Musk claimed that it would be called the Department of Government Efficiency—an acronym that matches Dogecoin’s ticker.

Whenever Musk mentioned his future political role with the so-called DOGE ahead of the election, the price of Dogecoin jumped.

But before Trump’s election win, Musk revealed what he has probably thought all along: that he isn’t seriously interested or involved in Bitcoin, Dogecoin, or any cryptocurrency. He just likes the meme coin.

“I’m actually not actively involved in crypto,” he said at a rally. “I make Dogecoin jokes and stuff because I just kind of like Dogecoin—because it’s got the best sense of humor and it has dogs and memes, and I love all those things.”

Still, the price of Dogecoin boomed higher, hitting a three-year high price of $0.48—though it’s fallen substantially since, as of this writing. Musk has recently praised Dogecoin’s rate of inflation and tweeted out a familiar meme image of a dust cloud with the Doge face engulfing a city.

And President-elect Trump made it official that Musk would lead the administration’s new department, though planned co-lead Vivek Ramaswamy bailed in January due to other political ambitions.

Trump even sold t-shirts showing himself and Musk alongside Doge-esque artwork. And the official DOGE website briefly featured the familiar DOGE meme imagery, boosting Dogecoin’s price in the process.

With Trump back in office, Musk’s DOGE started aggressively interrogating U.S. government spending, grabbing headlines as it accesses potentially sensitive citizen data while upending professional norms in the process.

But Musk departed the government role in May, and a public rift has formed between the two men. Musk made some shocking claims about Trump, and the president has in return said that DOGE should scrutinize Musk’s companies—and that he’d look into having Musk deported.

The public battle hasn’t done any favors for Dogecoin’s price, though it has briefly boosted meme coins inspired by the conflict.

Now Elon Musk is back to focusing on his companies, with recent moves reigniting speculation over whether X might integrate Dogecoin or other cryptocurrencies for payments.

And Musk has picked up another connection to Dogecoin of late, albeit unofficially.

Musk’s lawyer, Alex Spiro—who helped defend him in the $258 billion class action DOGE suit dismissed last year—is now chairman of CleanCore Solutions, a publicly traded firm billed as an “official” Dogecoin treasury company. That’s due to backing from House of Doge, the commercialization arm of the Dogecoin Foundation, which supports development around the coin.

Editor’s note: This story was originally published on November 13, 2024. It was last updated with new details on September 28, 2025.

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September 28, 2025 0 comments

GameFi Guides

Why Elon Musk, Sam Altman and Other Billionaires Are Betting On Brain-Computer Interfaces

by admin September 28, 2025

In brief

Elon Musk’s Neuralink and the Sam Altman-backed Merge Labs are driving a new wave of billionaire-backed brain-computer interface ventures.
Current BCI progress remains medical, with only five Neuralink patients implanted as of September 2025.
Experts warn BCIs are far from “thought reading,” and billionaire ambitions risk overshadowing real therapeutic potential.

Elon Musk already has rockets, cars, AI, and humanoid robots. Musk’s rival Sam Altman runs OpenAI, the company behind the leading AI chatbot, ChatGPT. Now, both men and other billionaires want a piece of the human brain.

Their latest bets on brain-computer interfaces, or BCIs, reveal less about today’s medical breakthroughs and more about a looming contest over who owns the neural on-ramp to digital life. As founders and experts in the space told Decrypt, billionaire attention “elevates the whole industry” even as it distorts priorities.

For billionaires, brain-computer interfaces are not just medical devices—they represent the next potential platform shift, a way to control the gateway between human thought and digital systems.

Owning that interface could mean owning the future of computing. That is why some of the most powerful people in the world are pouring money into BCIs: They see them as a hedge against artificial intelligence, a new control point in the tech stack, and perhaps the ultimate frontier for profit and influence.

Musk and Altman make moves

Musk founded Neuralink in 2016 with the goal of merging with machines, which he claimed may be the only way to keep pace with artificial intelligence. The company recently raised a $650 million Series E, placing it among the best-funded players in the field. Neuralink’s first patient, Noland Arbaugh, has shown he can control a cursor and browse the internet by thought alone.

The results have been mixed, but so far, five patients have now been implanted, with trials expanding to speech impairment and vision restoration. Musk keeps framing BCIs as not just medical devices, but a safeguard for humanity in an AI-dominated future.

Meanwhile, Altman has surfaced as a co-founder of Merge Labs, a new venture aiming to raise around $250 million at a valuation that could reach $850 million. Early reports suggest Merge may pursue non-invasive interfaces, a different path than Neuralink’s brain implants.

For Altman, who already commands one of the most powerful AI companies, the move signals that the next battle is not only about who builds the smartest models but who controls the pipeline that connects them to humans.

Other major bets

The circle extends beyond Musk and Altman. Prominent biohacker Bryan Johnson, who made his fortune in payments, poured $100 million into Kernel in 2016. Kernel develops neurotech platforms for measuring brain activity, positioning itself as an infrastructure play rather than a flashy implant company.

Neuralink’s investors also include Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund, evidence that Silicon Valley’s venture elite is preparing for the possibility that brain-computer links become the next foundational layer of computing.

“For me, their involvement is a good sign,” Tetiana Aleksandrova, CEO and co-founder of neurotechnology startup Subsense, told Decrypt. “When billionaires step into BCI, they bring visibility and capital that elevate the whole industry. Suddenly, more funds are planning to allocate resources to neurotechnology, more companies are founded, and more engineers discover that this is an exciting space worth dedicating their careers to.”

But Aleksandrova cautioned that billionaire involvement cuts both ways.

“Their funding can accelerate progress at a pace public funding rarely allows,” she explained. “At the same time, the pressure to deliver at startup speed can lead to unrealistic promises that put trust at risk. And in science, trust is just as critical as capital.”

Andreas Melhede, co-founder of neuroscience DAO Elata Bioscience, told Decrypt that while billionaire involvement accelerates interest and funding, it also narrows the agenda.

“The priorities tend to reflect the vision of a single individual or a gatekept corporate agenda, rather than the broader scientific community,” he said. “That means research often skews toward ‘moonshot’ projects designed to capture attention, rather than significant collaborative advances that actually move the field forward.”

Melhede agreed that billionaire rhetoric can both be good for and do harm to the industry, risking overshadowing important but less glamorous work. The bigger risk, he said, is centralization of power over something as important as human brains.

“If one company owns the infrastructure, code, and data, they own the keys to an individual’s thoughts and intentions,” he said. “This discourages transparency [and] slows independent validation and scientific progress. Access to BCI technology—and cognitive autonomy—is subject to the business decisions of a handful of high-profile figures. That is too much risk in too few hands.”

Speculation vs. reality

That tension defines the field. The billionaire pitch is sweeping—control the neural interface, control the future. But the present reality is narrower: coarse signals, fragile hardware, and systems that cannot “read thoughts” in the way public rhetoric sometimes suggests.

Still, such a breakthrough could occur “conceivably some day,” Gary Marcus, a cognitive scientist and professor emeritus of psychology and neural science at New York University, told Decrypt. “For now, we just don’t understand the neural code well enough. Of course, there are already interventions that make sense for people who are paralyzed and with few other options.”

Companies like Synchron and Inbrain continue pilot trials, with Inbrain’s graphene-based BCI platform receiving FDA Breakthrough Device designation. But these remain early-stage efforts, far from mass-market enhancement.

The stakes

The question is less whether brain-computer interfaces will work at scale, and more whose vision defines them. Musk frames BCIs as an existential safeguard. Altman positions them as strategic control points. Johnson and Thiel treat them as infrastructure bets.

For patients, the technology is about restoring lost abilities. For billionaires, it is about shaping the next human-machine platform—one where whoever owns the gateway may one day set the rules for how thought itself becomes data.

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September 28, 2025 0 comments

Product Reviews

Elon Musk Is Out to Rule Space. Can Anyone Stop Him?

by admin September 22, 2025

When the suit didn’t produce instant results, Musk went jingoistic. A few months earlier, in February 2014, Russia had invaded Ukraine, illegally annexing the Crimean Peninsula and triggering a global wave of condemnation against Moscow. Musk rode that wave in his successful push to get Congress and the Obama administration to wind down use of the United Launch Alliance’s signature rocket, the Atlas V, because it relied on Russian RD-180 engines. (The suit was eventually settled out of court.) The combination helped break ULA’s grip on government space launches.

Another big leap came in 2017. SpaceX started reusing its rocket cores, which dramatically brought down the price of getting to orbit. (Eight years later, its Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy are still the only rockets in their weight classes with reusable cores.) But nothing was more important than Mueller’s continued development of SpaceX’s Merlin engine. It became one of the most durable in aerospace history, even though, as a former employee told me, “performance-wise, it’s terrible.” Its power and efficiency are nothing special. “We didn’t have the resources to do a lot of design and analysis,” he adds. “And so we just tested the ever-loving shit out of the engine. We hot-fired it thousands of times. Now they have an engine that’s super robust.”

Today, thanks in part to its nine reusable Merlin engines, a Falcon 9 can take a kilogram to low Earth orbit for one-third the previous cost; the Falcon Heavy, which uses 27 Merlins, drops the cost nearly in half again. Some 85 percent of Falcon 9 missions go to space with previously used first stages. In 2022, SpaceX jumped from doing around 30 launches per year to more than 60, and last year it hit 138. NASA’s space launch and human exploration efforts are now almost entirely controlled by Musk. A whole new space economy has grown up around him, one that relies on his cheap space access to get networks of small spacecraft into low Earth orbit. Take Planet Labs, the satellite imaging company. Hundreds of its spacecraft were carried by Falcon 9.

Really, no one is even trying to catch up; they’re just trying to find niches in a Musk-dominated ecosystem. ULA is building rockets optimized to reach geostationary orbits, which are farther out, even as many of its customers follow Musk’s lead and keep their satellite constellations closer to Earth. Upstarts like Rocket Lab and Firefly are admired for their ingenuity. But their current operational rockets are tiny by comparison—capable of carrying, at most, a couple thousand pounds, versus 140,000 for the Falcon Heavy.

“SpaceX is a cornerstone in the space industry. And then there’s other cornerstones, like Firefly. We’re very complementary to SpaceX,” says Jason Kim, the CEO of Firefly Aerospace. “It’s kind of like air, land, and sea. There’s no one-size-fits-all kind of transportation method.” (Kim’s not alone in this thinking; Firefly just went public at a valuation of $8.5 billion; Rocket Lab’s market cap is about $21 billion.)

Jeff Bezos has the cash to compete with SpaceX. And he’s certainly been at it long enough—his rocket company, Blue Origin, started a quarter-century ago. But it has had, shall we say, competing priorities. It’s been hard at work on engines; its BE-4 engine is actually powering the first stage of ULA’s new rocket, confusingly enough. You may have seen that Blue Origin has a rocket for near-space tourism, the one that recently carried Bezos’ wife, Lauren Sánchez, and Katy Perry aloft. But the company’s big rocket, the one that’s supposed to compete with SpaceX, has flown exactly once. And when I ask Blue Origin’s rep what makes their rockets any better—or, at least, any different—from Musk’s, he tells me: “I don’t have a solid answer for you on that one.”

China, which once seemed poised to dominate global launch, has had trouble keeping up with Musk’s rising totals, successfully launching between 64 and 68 rockets annually over the past three years. SpaceX is not only launching twice as often, it’s carrying more than 10 times the reported mass to orbit. Stoke Space, founded by Blue Origin engineers, has aerospace geeks in a frenzy, but it has yet to put a rocket on the pad. United Launch Alliance, SpaceX’s OG competitor, has a powerful new rocket—more on that in a bit—but once again, Musk is ahead. He’s working on a truly massive launcher, arguably the biggest ever constructed. Both stages are supposed to be fully reusable (which means, of course, immense cost savings), while neither stage of ULA’s Vulcan will be fully reusable. And that, according to a new report from SpaceNews Intelligence, could relegate the one-time monopolist “to niche roles in government or regional and backup contracts, assuming they survive at all.”

II. SATELLITES

At the end of May, at his factory in Starbase, Texas, Musk was in full Mars evangelist mode. “This is where we’re going to develop the technology necessary to take humanity,” he told his employees, “to another planet for the first time in the four-and-a-half-billion-year history of Earth.”

But as he sketched out his soaring vision of this place cranking out 1,000 enormous Starships per year, Musk repeated a more mundane truth. No, not the part about the Starship’s uneven test record. The one about funding. “Starlink internet is what’s being used to pay for humanity getting to Mars.”

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September 22, 2025 0 comments

Product Reviews

Everyone Thinks Elon Musk is Going to Build a SpaceX Mobile Network

by admin September 15, 2025

SpaceX’s has been partnering with mobile carriers like T-Mobile to offer its satellite internet service Starlink to extend the reach of cell networks. But, according to a report from the Washington Post, the company has ambitions to be more than just a partner. Following a major purchase of wireless spectrum earlier this week, it appears everyone is expecting Elon Musk’s company to get into the wireless network business for itself.

On Monday, it was reported that SpaceX was finalizing a deal with satellite communications company EchoStar, the parent company of Dish Network, to buy up $17 billion worth of wireless spectrum. All signs suggest that SpaceX is after that spectrum to help build out Starlink’s 5G network, with the rumored goal to move satellite connectivity for phones beyond just emergency services and access in remote locations to a full-blown mobile network.

Musk hasn’t exactly backed away from the rumors. In an appearance on the All-In Podcast, he claimed the newly acquired spectrum would allow the company to deliver “high-bandwidth connectivity” directly from satellites to connected devices, albeit with a two-year lead time to get everything set up. “The net effect is you should be able to watch videos anywhere on your phone,” he said. That’s a big jump from Starlink’s current network offerings, which is currently only used for sending and receiving texts. The company claims it’ll offer voice calls soon. And that two-year timeline? Take it with a grain of salt, given Musk’s longstanding history of overpromising, but it does at least give some clarity as to his company’s end goal.

As for starting up a network to compete with AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon, Musk didn’t rule it out when talking to the All-In guys, who are always more than happy to drink the Kool-Aid unprompted. Musk said that purchasing a mobile network provider like Verizon in the future is “not out of the question.” According to The Washington Post’s reporting, Starlink likely doesn’t have the spectrum to compete in urban environments where volume is massive and competitors have the infrastructure advantage when it comes to handling that traffic. So getting into those spaces may require an acquisition rather than building its own network.

If Musk and SpaceX were to go that route, it’s unlikely they would face regulatory hurdles under the current administration. As WaPo pointed out, Brendan Carr, the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission appointed by Donald Trump, called SpaceX’s spectrum purchase a “potential game changer” for mobile networks. You’re probably not going to see an in-depth review of potential antitrust concerns when the top cop on the beat has pom-poms in his hands.

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September 15, 2025 0 comments

Gaming Gear

Elon Musk is trying to silence Microsoft employees who criticize Charlie Kirk

by admin September 14, 2025

Elon Musk is pressing Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella to look into Blizzard employees who criticized Charlie Kirk after his death. Musk’s post quotes an X thread listing names and screenshots of the developers.

Musk’s direct question to Nadella follows a broader censorship crackdown from Republicans targeting individuals celebrating Kirk’s death or criticizing him. Rep. Clay Higgins (R-LA) said he would use “Congressional authority and every influence with big tech platforms to mandate immediate ban for life of every post or commenter that belittled the assassination of Charlie Kirk.”

Former Blizzard developer Mark Kern, who goes by “Grummz” online and frequently posts about right-wing issues on X, quoted the original thread, claiming that the screenshotted posts showed Blizzard employees “trashing” Kirk. Musk then quoted the post himself with his question to Nadella.

“We’re aware of the views expressed by a small subset of our employees regarding recent events,” Microsoft said in a post on X. The post is not a reply to Musk but was shared on its main @Microsoft page. “We take matters like this very seriously and we are currently reviewing each individual situation. Comments celebrating violence against anyone are unacceptable and do not align with our values.” (The screenshots in the thread shared by Musk do not celebrate the shooting against Kirk.) Nadella has not replied to Musk publicly as of this writing.

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September 14, 2025 0 comments

NFT Gaming

Oracle’s Late AI Bet Sends Shares Soaring, Ellison Tops Musk as World’s Richest Man

by admin September 10, 2025

In brief

Oracle’s AI pivot pays off: Shares surged over 30% as the company projected $455 billion in booked future revenue and faster cloud growth.
Oracle’s neutral AI stance and ability to run models like ChatGPT inside its database stack drew major enterprise demand.
Founder Larry Ellison’s fortune swelled by nearly $100 billion, making him the world’s richest person.

Oracle Corp. stock rocketed as much as 40% in intraday trading—a rally so dramatic, it appears to have set a record for any company valued north of $500 billion. The trigger? A bold AI strategy finally paying off.

At the heart of today’s fireworks is Oracle’s up-close-and-personal pivot into artificial intelligence infrastructure. The company revealed that its Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) business now expects massive revenue growth: CEO Safra Catz said OCI revenue is expected to reach $18 billion in the current fiscal year, then grow to $32 billion in fiscal year 2027, and eventually $144 billion in the following three years.

But numbers alone don’t explain the thrill. The real signal: a massive pipeline of future business. Oracle’s “remaining performance obligations”—essentially what’s been booked but not yet recognized—soared 359% year-over-year to $455 billion, verging on a half-trillion-dollar backlog, the company reported.

CEO Safra Catz didn’t hide the enthusiasm, stating that most of the multiyear growth is already locked in, and more multibillion-dollar contracts are expected in the coming months.

“Over the next few months, we expect to sign-up several additional multi-billion-dollar customers, and RPO is likely to exceed half-a-trillion dollars,” said CEO Safra Catz.

AI is not just a buzzword—it’s infrastructure

Oracle’s AI attractiveness comes from its strategic alliances and neutral positioning in the AI arms race. It’s part of Stargate, a massive infrastructure initiative with OpenAI and SoftBank, giving Oracle preferred status as a compute-provider-of-choice.

Crucially, Oracle claims to offer AI inferencing capabilities, running models like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Grok directly within its database stack, a convenience hyperscalers have yet to match. That unique positioning—neutral, integrated, and AI-enabled—has turned once-lagging Oracle into a major contender in AI infrastructure.

The ripple effect

In one of those rare moments where investor glee merges with spectacle, Larry Ellison vaulted past Elon Musk to become the world’s richest person, thanks to the stock surge. His net worth swelled by around $100 billion to roughly $393–400 billion.

Not everyone’s as ecstatic as Mrs. Ellison: Analysts caution the aggressive capex—Oracle expects to spend $35 billion to build data-center and supply AI chips—could dent free-cash-flow in the near term and pressure margins.

AI was the marquee act, but Oracle also highlighted four multibillion-dollar contracts with three different customers in its latest quarter. That helped lift first-quarter revenue by 12% to $14.93 billion, including a 28% jump in cloud revenue to $7.2 billion.

Analysts at Piper Sandler and Bank of America weren’t shy either, raising price targets and upgrading the stock—noting the AI-driven backlog as “too strong to be summed up simply as a blow-out.”

The bottom line

Oracle’s AI pivot has become an investor tidal wave, backed by real contracts, locked-in backlog, and infrastructure ambitions that others can’t match—at least right now.

Whether the swell leads to a sea change or tidal recession depends on execution. But for now, Oracle has Wall Street enthralled, and its AI story is delivering more than just talking points—it’s delivering stock market fireworks. And if that’s not a mixed metaphor, then nothing is.

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September 10, 2025 0 comments

Gaming Gear

Tesla Offers ONE TRILLION DOLLAR Pay Package to Elon Musk (If He Can Stay Focused)

by admin September 5, 2025

Tesla’s board is asking shareholders to sign off on a massive, unprecedented pay package that could turn its CEO, Elon Musk, who is already the world’s richest man, into the first trillionaire.

If the plan is approved, Musk would need to reach several performance benchmarks over the next 10 years to get the full payout.

The board said in a securities filing on Friday that the pay package’s primary goal is to retain “Mr. Musk to lead Tesla through its next phase of transformational growth.” In other words, the board wants Musk’s full attention on Tesla. But Musk, who’s been running the company since 2008, is also juggling four other ventures: SpaceX, xAI, Neuralink, and the Boring Company.

Musk’s ruinous forays into politics have also hurt Tesla’s brand. In 2024, he endorsed Donald Trump for president, poured millions into Trump’s campaign, and led a shakeup of the federal government via the new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). Musk’s politics triggered backlash that included incidents of arson and vandalism at Tesla stores and charging stations. Meanwhile, Tesla logged two of its worst quarters in years, with global vehicle deliveries down 13%. In Europe, sales are especially dire.

The new pay proposal follows a Delaware judge’s decision to block Musk’s previous $55 billion compensation plan from 2018, siding with shareholders who said the deal was unfairly approved. Tesla has appealed the ruling. And in August, the company offered Musk about $29 billion in stock if he agreed to stick around for two more years.

How the new plan would work

Under the new plan, Musk could be awarded up to 423 million shares, worth about $143 billion at today’s prices and equal to roughly 12% of Tesla’s stock. Musk already owns about 13% of the company. To cash in, he has to stay on as CEO or hold another executive office and hit a series of production and market-cap milestones.

The award is split into 12 tranches. The first unlocks if Tesla’s market cap, currently hovering around $1 trillion, doubles to $2 trillion. The next nine tranches require an extra $500 billion each, and the final two require a trillion-dollar jump each.

For Musk to take home the full payout, Tesla would need to hit a market value of $8.5 trillion within the next decade, about eight times higher than its current assessment. That would make Musk’s stock haul worth more than $1 trillion.

The plan also ties his payout to some ambitious operational goals, including delivering 20 million vehicles, putting a million robotaxis on the road, and rolling out a million Optimus humanoid robots.

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September 5, 2025 0 comments

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Gaming Gear

Elon Musk, AI Startups, and The Case of The Allegedly Missing Trade Secrets

by admin September 5, 2025

A second lawsuit filed by an artificial intelligence company alleging a former employee stole trade secrets has been filed in California, just days after Elon Musk’s xAI alleged it had recently experienced corporate espionage.

In this case, Scale AI, a leading AI data-labeling firm, sued competitor Mercor Inc. in federal court Wednesday, accusing the startup and a former employee of misappropriating trade secrets to win new business.

Scale is valued at approximately $29 billion following a massive $15 billion Meta investment.

The allegations

The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, targets Eugene Ling, Scale’s former head of engagement management, and his new employer, Mercor.

The case is Scale AI Inc. v. Mercor.io Corporation, 25-cv-07402.

In its court filing, Scale alleges Ling downloaded over 100 confidential documents, including proprietary customer strategy materials and product information, to a personal Google Drive while still employed at the company and after meeting with Mercor’s CEO.

According to the complaint, Ling then contacted one of Scale’s top clients, referred to as “Customer A,” on behalf of Mercor while still at Scale, even arranging calls to pitch Mercor’s services. The lawsuit claims this effort was an attempt to steal business worth “millions of dollars.”

Attempts to reach Ling’s attorney were unsuccessful. But on his social media, Ling posted that he “never used” any of the Scale files and is “still waiting for guidance on how to resolve this.”

“I just wanted to say that there truly was no nefarious intent here,” he wrote. “I’m really sorry to my new team at Mercor for having to deal with this.”

Mercor’s response

Mercor co-founder Surya Midha denied any misuse of Scale’s intellectual property, stating that while several former Scale employees have joined Mercor, the two firms operate under “intentionally different” strategies. He added that Mercor is investigating the matter and had offered to have Ling delete any documents in his possession.

“While Mercor has hired many people who departed Scale, we have no interest in any of Scale’s trade secrets and in fact are intentionally running our business in a different way,” Midha said in a statement.

“Eugene informed us that he had old documents in a personal Google Drive, which we have never accessed and are now investigating,” it reads. “We reached out to Scale six days ago offering to have Eugene destroy the files or reach a different resolution, and we are now awaiting their response.”

Scale, in turn, argues that ordering Ling to destroy the files would eliminate crucial evidence. The company is seeking damages, legal fees, an injunction barring Mercor from using the stolen material, and the return of all misappropriated documents.

Scale’s legal move is another speed bump for a turbulent period for the company, which has recently experienced Meta’s massive investment, the hiring of Scale’s CEO Alexandr Wang by Meta, and a 14% workforce reduction.

Cutthroat competition comes to the courts

The case is a glimpse into the fiercely competitive nature of the AI sector, where intellectual property—particularly data strategy and customer relationships—is the key to market dominance. The situation mirrors another recent trade secret lawsuit, when Elon Musk’s xAI sued a former engineer for allegedly stealing confidential information on his way to a rival.

In that case, Musk’s company is alleging Zhihao “Zack” Li stole confidential files tied to the development of Grok, the company’s chatbot, before departing for rival OpenAI.

The complaint, filed in California state court, accuses Li, who joined xAI last year as an engineer, of copying proprietary materials in July 2025 shortly after agreeing to take a job at OpenAI. Court filings say Li also sold $7 million worth of vested xAI stock ahead of his departure.

According to the lawsuit, Li admitted during an internal meeting on Aug. 14 that he had taken sensitive documents, though xAI alleges he attempted to “cover his tracks” by deleting files. Forensic checks later uncovered additional materials still stored on his devices, the company alleges.

Musk’s startup argues that the stolen information could allow OpenAI to enhance ChatGPT with what it describes as xAI’s “more innovative AI and imaginative features.”

That case is xAI Corp v. Xuechen Li, U.S. District Court, Northern District of California, No. 3:25-cv-07292-RFL

What are the broader implications?

For investors and the AI industry in general, the lawsuit highlights two key risks.

Firstly, the theft of highly complex and coveted intellectual property, or even the appearance of it, can rapidly alter competitive positioning in a market where trust and proprietary data are currency. Secondly, it signals that AI startups may increasingly turn to legal avenues to enforce boundaries and protect their turf.

As AI becomes a part of so much of the technology we see and use all the time, the companies that make it are going to become even more fiercely protective of their products and brands. The value of proprietary data and client relationships makes legal protection, and the precedents set through lawsuits like this, the next frontier for companies looking to safeguard their tools and reputations.

“Scale has become the industry leader on the strength of our ideas, innovation, and execution,” Joe Osborne, a spokesperson for Scale, said in a statement. “We won’t allow anyone to take unlawful shortcuts at the expense of our business.”

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September 5, 2025 0 comments

NFT Gaming

Dogecoin price slumps despite Elon Musk, DOGE treasury rumor

by admin August 30, 2025

Dogecoin slipped more than 2% to $0.21 in the last 24 hours, bucking the coin’s usual pattern of rallying on Elon Musk-related news.

The drop comes as rumors swirl that Musk’s attorney, Alex Spiro, is spearheading a Dogecoin (DOGE) treasury project aimed at raising $200 million from public investors.

According to Fortune, investors are receiving offers for a public vehicle that will invest in Dogecoin coins.

Summary

Dogecoin slips 2% to $0.21 despite news of a $200m treasury initiative
Elon Musk’s lawyer Alex Spiro is set to chair the planned DOGE treasury
House of Doge backs the venture as Dogecoin’s official corporate vehicle

Dogecoin price slumps despite positive rumors

Since its 2013 debut, Dogecoin’s price has often moved in step with Musk’s public comments. However, the market’s muted response to the proposed treasury vehicle—a project reportedly approved by the official Dogecoin organization, the House of Doge—suggests that traders may be prioritizing fundamentals over hype.

Details about the structure and launch timeline remain scarce, even as analysts see potential for a renewed rally.

Spiro’s Track Record Defending Musk in Crypto Cases

Alex has successfully defended Musk against allegations of market manipulation.

In August 2024, Spiro helped secure the dismissal of a 2022 lawsuit claiming Musk had manipulated Dogecoin markets through social media posts.

Spiro, who also represents celebrities such as Jay-Z and Alec Baldwin, successfully argued that Musk’s comments constituted protected speech rather than market manipulation.

Musk’s influence over Dogecoin pricing has been so pronounced that his social media activity has become a key factor in trading strategies.

His 2021 Saturday Night Live appearance, where he called Dogecoin “a hustle,” caused immediate price volatility.

Nevertheless, analyst Ali recently posted on X that “Dogecoin $DOGE is ready for a 30% move.” This suggests that technical momentum may be building despite current price weakness.

This prediction aligns with historical patterns where DOGE often experiences sharp moves following periods of consolidation.

The treasury company’s plans could provide sustained buying pressure for Dogecoin if successfully launched.

At last check Saturday, Dogecoin is down nearly 9% over the previous seven days.

Source: CoinGecko

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August 30, 2025 0 comments

Product Reviews

Grok’s Tips On How to Assassinate Elon Musk Are One More Red Flag For Wall Street

by admin August 27, 2025

Wall Street tech watchers that had only recently recovered from Elon Musk’s AI chatbot going rogue are now quietly reassessing the technology, after a new leak of thousands of user conversations show it teaching people how to make drugs, assassinate Musk himself, and build malware and explosives.

Luckily for xAI, the company that created Musk’s AI chatbot Grok, the chatbot in question, it is not a publicly traded company, so no public investor or shareholder backlash has forced down its share price or pressured its executives over privacy concerns.

But the extent of the leak has made it headline news for days and has sounded new alarms with privacy experts, who have already had a long summer filled with misbehaving tech and the companies, or billionaire moguls, that make it.

So what did Grok do now?

More than 370,000 user conversations with Grok were publicly exposed through search engines like Google, Bing and DuckDuckGo on Aug. 21. That led to the posting of a wide range of disturbing content and sent its creator, xAI, scrambling to contain the fallout and fix the malfunction that reportedly caused the leak.

What kind of disturbing content? Well, in one instance, Grok offers up a detailed plan on how to assassinate Musk himself, before walking that back as “against my policies.” In another exchange, the chatbot also helpfully pointed users to instructions on how to make fentanyl at home or build explosives.

Forbes, which broke the story, reports that the leak stemmed from an unintended malfunction in Grok’s “share” function, which allowed private chats to be indexed and accessed without user consent.

Neither Musk nor xAI responded to a request for comment. Its creator has not yet publicly addressed the leak.

So how detailed is detailed?

In this instance, pretty detailed.

“The company prohibits use of its bot to “promot[e] critically harming human life or to ‘develop bioweapons, chemical weapons, or weapons of mass destruction,’” Forbes reports.

“But in published, shared conversations easily found via a Google search, Grok offered users instructions on how to make illicit drugs like fentanyl and methamphetamine, code a self-executing piece of malware and construct a bomb and methods of suicide,” it said.

Wait, what was that about assassinating Elon Musk?

Yes, Forbes says that is also in this leak, and it was reportedly a pretty extensive plan.

“Grok also offered a detailed plan for the assassination of Elon Musk,” Forbes’ reporting continues. “Via the ‘share” function,’ the illicit instructions were then published on Grok’s website and indexed by Google.”

A day later, Grok offered a modified response and denied assistance that would incorporate violence, saying, “I’m sorry, but I can’t assist with that request. Threats of violence or harm are serious and against my policies.”

When asked about self-harm, the chatbot redirected users to medical resources, including the Samaritans in the UK and American mental health organizations.

It also revealed that some users appeared to experience “AI psychosis” when using Grok, Forbes reports, engaging in bizarre or delusional conversations, a trend that has been raising alarms about the mental health implications of deep engagement with these systems since the first chatbot became public.

How could Grok be used in a business setting?

Musk’s chatbot caught Wall Street’s eye pretty much as soon as it debuted in November 2023, But what xAI says it can do and what it actually has done continue to be in flux.

The company says that Grok offers a range of functions that can be valuable for business operations, like using tools to automate routine tasks, analyze real-time market data from X, and streamline workflows through its application programming interface (API).

The ways it could actually be used by businesses varies, but investors who have been kicking the tires on this particular chatbot have continued to raise concerns about its accuracy. The way the chatbot handles privacy has also been an issue, but is now front and center for experts.

“AI chatbots are a privacy disaster in progress,” Luc Rocher, an associate professor at the Oxford Internet Institute, told the BBC.

Rocher said users who disclosed everything from their mental health to how they run their businesses are another example of how chatbots are handling private data, despite how public that data may one day become.

“Once leaked online, these conversations will stay there forever,” they added.

Carissa Veliz, an associate professor in philosophy at Oxford University’s Institute for Ethics in AI, told the BBC that Grok’s “problematic” practice of not disclosing which data will be public is concerning.

“Our technology doesn’t even tell us what it’s doing with our data, and that’s a problem,” she said.

Grok has also been studied by analysts and researchers to test if it has the potential to increase productivity, but how reliable it is at relaying correct information remains a work in progress. Without consistently true and verifiable information, it is likely still too nascent to do much without having serious oversight over its possible accuracy or bias.

For many analysts and advisers, that makes investing in Grok a proceed-with-caution scenario.

“Speculation isn’t bad, but unmanaged speculation is dangerous. Grok is a hot story, but it’s still early stage,” Tim Bohen, an analyst at Stocks to Trade, writes. “The model could stall. The platform could underperform. The hype cycle could peak before fundamentals catch up. Traders need to know the risks.”

Musk previously flamed ChatGPT for a similar leak

In a classic episode of Musk’s ongoing telenovela with the world, OpenAI also experimented briefly with a similar share function earlier this year. It stopped that quickly after around 4,500 conversations were indexed by Google and issue grabbed media attention. But the problem had already caught Musk’s attention, leading him to tweet, “‘Grok FTW.” Unlike OpenAI, Grok’s “Share’”

Users who have now found their private conversations with Grok leaked told Forbes they were shocked by the development, particularly given Musk’s earlier criticism of a similar tool.

“I was surprised that Grok chats shared with my team were getting automatically indexed on Google, despite no warnings of it, especially after the recent flare-up with ChatGPT,” Nathan Lambert, a computational scientist at the Allen Institute for AI who had his exchange with the chatbot leaked, told the Forbes.

No word from Musk or OpenAI’s Sam Altman on who gets FTW this time.

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August 27, 2025 0 comments