Dogecoin Set for 15% Surge as Elon Musk Escapes DOGE Manipulation Charges

Elon Musk didn’t manipulate Dogecoin (DOGE) prices during the memecoin’s 2021 boom-and-bust cycle, according to U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein in Manhattan, who quashed charges of insider trading against the controversial billionaire in a ruling on Aug. 29.

The ruling comes when DOGE is treading around a key technical support level, eyeing a sharp rebound heading into September 2024. Any positive news concerning Musk and Dogecoin has been bullish for the memecoin in recent years.

Musk Didn’t Dump His Dogecoin, After All

Notably, a group of crypto investors had accused Musk of manipulating Dogecoin prices for personal gain. They allege that Musk used his Twitter posts, a 2021 appearance on NBC’s “Saturday Night Live,” and other publicity stunts to inflate DOGE’s value by over 36,000% over two years, only to let it crash afterward.

According to the investors, Musk and Tesla timed their trades to coincide with his public statements and activities, including a notable incident in April 2023 when Musk replaced Twitter’s blue bird logo with Dogecoin’s Shiba Inu mascot.

As promised pic.twitter.com/Jc1TnAqxAV

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 3, 2023

That caused DOGE’s price to surge 30% before Musk allegedly sold off his holdings.

However, Judge Hellerstein dismissed these claims, stating that Musk’s tweets—such as calling Dogecoin the future currency of Earth, suggesting it could be used to purchase Teslas, or even flown to the moon by SpaceX—were “aspirational and puffery, not factual and susceptible to being falsified.”

Musk’s lawyer, Alex Spiro, celebrated the ruling, saying, “It’s a very good day for Dogecoin.” Musk’s legal team argued for the case’s dismissal, asserting that his “innocuous and often silly tweets” were not unlawful and that there was no evidence Musk or Tesla engaged in suspicious trading or owned the alleged wallets.

DOGE Technical Analysis: Ascending Channel Bounce Next

Musk’s well-known influence on the Dogecoin market trends could boost its prices in the coming weeks. A technical setup further supports the bullish scenario.

As of Aug. 30, DOGE’s price was bouncing after testing the lower trendline of its prevailing short-term ascending channel as support. Previous bounces from the same level have pushed the price toward the upper trendline, a scenario that could repeat in September, boosted further by the Musk factor and the Federal Reserve’s potential interest rate cuts in the same month.

That said, the DOGE price will likely hit $0.116 by September’s end. This level further coincides with the upper trendline of Dogecoin’s multi-month descending channel pattern and the 200-day exponential moving average (200-day EMA; the blue wave in the chart above).

A breakout above the descending channel pattern will likely trigger the next resistance target toward $0.143, its July 2024 high. On the other hand, a pullback will have DOGE eye a sharp decline toward the channel’s lower trendline, aligning with the January-February 2024 support of around $0.076, down 23% from the current price levels.

Dogecoin Whales Are Accumulating

On-chain data looks skewed toward bulls, though, increasing the likelihood of the descending channel breakout toward $0.143 in the coming months.

Notably, Dogecoin’s richest investors, also known as “whales,” have returned to accumulating DOGE tokens in August, particularly in the aftermath of Jerome Powell’s dovish outlook at the recent Jackson Hole symposium.

That is visible in the recent increase in the DOGE supply held by entities with over a billion tokens (the royal blue wave) and the simultaneous decrease in the supply held by the 10 million—100 million DOGE balance cohort.

The data proves that the 10 million to 100 million DOGE cohort is accumulating DOGE, thus increasing their holdings to become part of the Dogecoin billionaire club.