Elon Musk is ready for a rematch with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
The billionaire Tesla chief appeared to welcome rumors that the agency was probing his Twitter posts about Dogecoin, his favorite meme-inspired cryptocurrency.
“I hope they do! It would be awesome,” Musk tweeted Thursday, adding two emojis of a face crying with laughter.
The world’s second-richest man was responding to unconfirmed chatter about the alleged SEC investigation.
Financial news service First Squawk reported the probe’s existence in a Thursday tweet, citing unnamed “sources familiar with the matter.” But the outlet didn’t provide any further details and no other reports have confirmed the purported investigation.
The speculation came more than two years after Musk’s famous Twitter-related tangle with the SEC.
Regulators fined him $20 million and forced him to step down as Tesla’s board chairman in September 2018 after he tweeted that he had “funding secured” to take the electric-car maker private at $420 a share.
The surprise claim caused Tesla’s shares to surge, but the SEC found Musk hadn’t locked down any financing for the purported deal and that he settled on the $420 price because he “had recently learned about the number’s significance in marijuana culture.”
Musk took a defiant stance toward the agency in a December 2018 “60 Minutes” interview, saying, “I do not respect the SEC.” He also tweeted a suggestive jab at the commission last July: “SEC, three letter acronym, middle word is Elon’s.”
Musk’s Twitter posts have indeed helped drive up the price of Dogecoin, whose value has surged more than 800 percent this year even though it started as a joke based on an internet meme of a Shiba Inu dog.
Musk caused a spike on Wednesday by tweeting a photoshopped image of the cryptocurrency’s canine mascot planting a Dogecoin flag on the moon. He’s also moved the market by claiming he bought some Dogecoin for his infant son and raising concerns about “concentration” of the coin’s ownership.
Dogecoin was recently trading down 9.7 percent at about 5.1 cents amid the hubbub about the alleged SEC probe.
The SEC didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment early Friday.
