Elon Musk advised an Oakland jury that the majority cryptocurrencies are scams throughout testimony in his civil trial in opposition to OpenAI, marking a notable break from his years as one of many sector’s loudest public boosters.
The Tesla and SpaceX chief made the comment when requested a few 2018 OpenAI plan to lift funds by an preliminary coin providing (ICO), in response to New York Occasions reporter Mike Isaac.
A Sharp Flip for Crypto’s Most Vocal Backer
Musk spent the 2020 to 2021 cycle shifting markets with each tweets and company buys. Tesla acquired $1.5 billion of Bitcoin (BTC) in 2021, one of many earliest stability sheet allocations by a serious public firm.
His posts on Dogecoin (DOGE) repeatedly pushed the meme token to new highs that very same 12 months. The billionaire has additionally confirmed private holdings in Bitcoin, Ethereum (ETH), and Dogecoin throughout previous interviews.
That stance started to chill in 2022, when Tesla bought roughly 75% of its Bitcoin reserve. The corporate has held the place regular since, retaining 11,509 BTC price $879 million in Q1 2026 after a $222 million markdown.
Elon Musk Tells Jury Most Crypto Is a Rip-off as X Rolls Out Cashtags
The courtroom comment coincided with a parallel push at Musk’s social platform. X head of product Nikita Bier mentioned the corporate was rolling out an online model of Cashtags, a function that converts $tickers for shares and crypto into clickable real-time charts and asset-specific submit feeds.
Bier framed the device as a method to place X as a core buying and selling terminal. Bundled controls, together with contract tackle matching and account locks on first-time crypto posters, are meant to filter out fraudulent tokens earlier than they attain customers.
The rollout matches a broader X finance push that additionally consists of funds and pilot buying and selling options. Musk’s distinction between advantage property and scams maps immediately onto Cashtags’ pitch, separating what the function needs to floor from what its anti-scam controls are designed to suppress.
ICO Plan Resurfaces in Courtroom
The rip-off remark surfaced as OpenAI’s scrapped 2018 token proposal entered the trial document.
“In January 2018, mere months after their September 2017 ‘enthusiasm,’ Altman proposed a scamworthy ‘ICO,’ or preliminary coin providing, that will have seen OpenAI, Inc. promote its personal cryptocurrency. Musk shot down this concept too, stating ‘it might merely end in an enormous lack of credibility for OpenAI and everybody related to the ICO,’” Musk’s workforce claimed.
Musk, an OpenAI co-founder from 2015, alleges the corporate breached its founding contract by partnering with Microsoft and promoting industrial merchandise.
“A few of them have advantage, however most of them are scams.”
That language got here in response to questions in regards to the early ICO dialogue, attributed by Isaac.
OpenAI counters that Musk backed the ICO plan, which might have required spinning out a for-profit subsidiary. Jury proceedings are anticipated to final about three weeks.
The submit Elon Musk Says Most Crypto Are Scams, However X Launches New Crypto Buying and selling Terminal appeared first on BeInCrypto.