Elon Musk called most crypto projects scams while testifying in Oakland this week, pulling Bitcoin, Dogecoin, and an old OpenAI token plan into his court fight with Sam Altman.
Inside the courtroom, Elon was asked about OpenAI’s short-lived 2018 plan to raise funds through an initial coin offering, or ICO. He said, “Some of them have merit, but most of them are scams,” based on a post from New York Times reporter Mike Isaac.
Elon brings OpenAI’s 2018 token plan into the fight over its charity roots
The ICO issue came up because OpenAI once looked at creating a crypto token to help fund the nonprofit. An ICO is when a crypto team sells tokens to raise cash. The term borrows from IPO, but it is not the same thing as selling stock.
The late-2010s ICO boom pulled in a lot of risky money, then many of those token projects collapsed after getting funded. Crypto traders remember that period clearly. It was noisy, fast, and full of people pretending a white paper was a business.
That old plan now sits inside a much larger legal fight. Elon claims OpenAI broke its founding agreement when it built a commercial business and took a major investment from Microsoft (MSFT). In court, he said OpenAI “[stole] a charity.”Â
His case is built around the idea that the company was created to serve the public, not to become another closed AI power center racing for revenue.
OpenAI denies that version of events. The company says Elon knew it might need a for-profit structure to raise enough money.
In a company blog post, OpenAI said he supported the ICO plan, which would have included a for-profit arm. That claim is important because it pushes back against his argument that the later business structure came out of nowhere.
Later, while answering questions from his own lawyer, Elon said he was “reassured” by OpenAI Chief Executive Officer Sam Altman and others that the nonprofit would keep acting as a charity. OpenAI and Sam have accused him of harassment.
They also say the lawsuit is really aimed at hurting a rival to xAI, the AI company Elon co-founded in 2023. So the court is now dealing with charity promises, AI money, Microsoft, and a crypto fundraising idea from six years earlier. Very normal tech-world disaster menu.
Tesla’s Bitcoin numbers show why Elon’s crypto comment landed inside a bigger market story
Elon has not always sounded this cold on crypto. During the pandemic bull run, he became one of the loudest public names tied to the market.
Tesla (TSLA) bought $1.5 billion of Bitcoin in 2021, putting crypto directly on the balance sheet of a major public company. That made Tesla one of the earlier big corporate buyers at the time.
His tweets about Dogecoin also helped turn the meme coin into a giant retail trade. DOGE was already strange by design, but Elon gave it a much bigger audience. Traders watched his posts like price alerts. Some made money. Some got burned. That is crypto. Nobody needs a sermon.
Tesla then sold 75% of its Bitcoin in mid-2022. Because of that sale, the company did not fully benefit from the later rally after Donald Trump’s election, when Bitcoin climbed above $125,000 in 2024. Tesla still kept part of its position, but the remaining coins took a hit in the first quarter of 2026.
Regulatory filings show Tesla reduced the value of its remaining 11,509 Bitcoin by $222 million in Q1 2026. As of March 31, the company listed $786 million in crypto holdings and reported an after-tax impairment loss of $173 million. Bitcoin was down 10% for the year and traded at $75,350 at the time of writing.
Elon finished his testimony on Thursday morning. Sam Altman and Greg Brockman were in court for much of the questioning. After being introduced, Sam and Greg sat behind their lawyers and listened. Greg also took notes on a yellow legal pad.
A large part of Elon’s testimony focused on his break with OpenAI’s leaders while they searched for enough money to compete with Alphabet Inc.’s Google (GOOGL) and other for-profit AI companies. “In strict monetary terms, I contributed $38 million,” Elon said this week.
After Elon left the stand, Jared Birchall, who runs his family office, testified. Jared told jurors that Elon paid rent for OpenAI’s office in the early years. He also said Elon later told him to stop paying that rent in 2020.
