Elon Musk Says Most Crypto Are Scams, But X Launches New Crypto Trading Terminal

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Elon Musk told an Oakland jury that most cryptocurrencies are scams during testimony in his civil trial against OpenAI, marking a notable break from his years as one of the sector’s loudest public boosters. The Tesla and SpaceX chief made the remark when asked about a 2018 OpenAI plan to raise funds through an initial coin offering (ICO), according to New York Times reporter Mike Isaac. A Sharp Turn for Crypto’s Most Vocal Backer Musk spent the 2020 to 2021 cycle moving markets with both tweets and corporate buys. Tesla acquired $1.5 billion of Bitcoin (BTC) in 2021, one of the earliest balance sheet allocations by a major public company. His posts on Dogecoin (DOGE) repeatedly pushed the meme token to new highs that same year. The billionaire has also confirmed personal holdings in Bitcoin, Ethereum (ETH), and Dogecoin across past interviews. That stance began to cool in 2022, when Tesla sold roughly 75% of its Bitcoin reserve. The company has held the position steady since, retaining 11,509 BTC worth $879 million in Q1 2026 after a $222 million markdown. Elon Musk Tells Jury Most Crypto Is a Scam as X Rolls Out Cashtags The courtroom remark coincided with a parallel push at Musk’s social platform. X head of product Nikita Bier said the company was rolling out a web version of Cashtags, a feature that converts $tickers for stocks and crypto into clickable real-time charts and asset-specific post feeds. Bier framed the tool as a way to position X as a core trading terminal. Bundled controls, including contract address matching and account locks on first-time crypto posters, are intended to filter out fraudulent tokens before they reach users. The rollout fits a broader X finance push that also includes payments and pilot trading features. Musk’s distinction between merit assets and scams maps directly onto Cashtags’ pitch, separating what the feature wants to surface from what its anti-scam controls are designed to suppress. ICO Plan Resurfaces in Court The scam comment surfaced as OpenAI’s scrapped 2018 token proposal entered the trial record. “In January 2018, mere months after their September 2017 ‘enthusiasm,’ Altman proposed a scamworthy ‘ICO,’ or initial coin offering, that would have seen OpenAI, Inc. sell its own cryptocurrency. Musk shot down this idea too, stating ‘it would simply result in a massive loss of credibility for OpenAI and everyone associated with the ICO,’” Musk’s team claimed. Musk, an OpenAI co-founder from 2015, alleges the company breached its founding contract by partnering with Microsoft and selling commercial products. “Some of them have merit, but most of them are scams.” That language came in response to questions about the early ICO discussion, attributed by Isaac. OpenAI counters that Musk backed the ICO plan, which would have required spinning out a for-profit subsidiary. Jury proceedings are expected to last about three weeks.

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