In a historic and embarrassing first, an old Reddit meme could become an actual government agency by Donald Trumpsecond term as president, thanks to Elon Musk. A few months before Trump’s re-election, the Tesla CEO and Trump megadonor was discussing a possible administrative role in what he called the Ministry of Government Effectivenessor DOGE. On Tuesday, the president-elect announced he was making that dream a reality, appointing Musk, alongside businessman and defeated presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, to head the government. an agency of the same namewhich would “pave the way for my administration to dismantle government bureaucracy.”
With this action, Trump transformed a decade-old meme into a bizarre and far-reaching reality for American politics.
By Internet standards, “doge” is an ancient artifact. In 2013, photos of Kabosu, a female Shiba Inu owned by a Japanese kindergarten teacher, started going viral on Redditusually with rainbow Comic Sans text that suggested the dog’s inner monologue – or “doge”, as a playful misspelling put it.
A cryptocurrency is born
The same year, two software designers had the idea of parodying bitcoin, which then established itself as the first decentralized cryptocurrency, with a joke coin that would feature the doge meme as its logo: Dogecoin, with the code DOGE market. Despite their satirical intentions, the coin has found a devoted community, one that has outlived the popularity of the cutesy meme itself, even though it has long traded well below a penny. Yet the 2017-2018 crypto bubble saw a surge in trading and pushed the coin’s value to a new high, and in 2019, Musk himself was tweeting about it. “Dogecoin might be my favorite cryptocurrency,” he says. job this month of April. “It’s pretty cool.”
From that point on, Dogecoin’s fluctuations were undeniably linked to Musk’s comments on the matter. He holds an unspecified amount of cryptocurrency – with some even when speculating that he is a “whale” who has purchased a huge percentage of the total coins in circulation – and regularly interacts with his main promoters online. Summer 2020 saw another DOGE buying frenzy, spurred by TikTok hype, but the coin really exploded during GameStop »meme stock» January 2021 craze. Encouraged by Musk’s tweets and memes (as well as Snoop Dogg and Gene Simmons), investors pushed it to a new high of $0.08 in February. Musk declared it’s “the people’s crypto.”
It continued to rise through April and reached an all-time high of $0.74 in May 2021, when Musk hosted an episode of Saturday evening live And peddled the currency on Weekend Update – while admitting that crypto was a “hustle”. The price of Dogecoin dropped significantly during and after the show. The same week, Musk announced that SpaceX would fully finance a lunar mission with Dogecoin. (This launch has been delayed indefinitely.) Musk continued to spam Twitter with Dogecoin memes and insane messages related to currency, once type the lyrics to the children’s song “Baby Shark” as “Baby Doge, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo”. He also indicated that he had bought DOGE for his young son, X Æ A-Xii, and implied that Tesla could start accept currency – this was eventually the case, but only for goods, and the option was subsequently abandoned. Tesla has not yet accepted payment for a car in Dogecoin.
After Dogecoin fell back to earth, reaching $0.07 in June 2022, Musk faced a $258 billion lawsuit from investors who accused him of orchestrating a pyramid scheme by manipulating the price with his tweets, his public comments and the SNL appearance, arguing that all this contributed to a 36,000 percent price increase before the crash. This complaint was edited several times in subsequent years to accommodate other Musk stunts — including the April 2023 period, where, as Twitter’s new owner, he briefly changed the site’s bird logo to the most known to the “doge” Shiba Inu. This little joke sent Dogecoin 30 percent higher. In August 2024, a judge finally rejected the investors’ lawsuit, calling Musk’s support for the coin “ambitious” rather than “factual.”
Elon turns to Trump
In August, Musk was pumping million dollars in a Super PAC with the goal of electing Trump and gaining greater influence in Washington. He happened to be aligned with leading crypto evangelists, who supported Trump in the belief that he would. relax regulations on the industry. It was at this critical juncture in the campaign that a Dogecoin enthusiast suggested on X that Musk’s role under a Trump administration should be in the “Department of Government Effectiveness (DOGE).” Musk replied“It’s the perfect name.”
It appears the Trump team agreed, or at least acquiesced to the request as it began preparations to take the White House. After the election, Dogecoin rose again – along with other crypto assets – from $0.15 before Trump’s victory to $0.44 when DOGE went official on Tuesday morning. Musk expressed his own enthusiasm about the “merchandise“DOGE will sell and promises: “All actions of the Ministry of Government Efficiency will be published online for maximum transparency. “Given his record of broken promisesthis seems unlikely to come true. Musk previously said major changes to the X platform always be voted on by users, to then delete these surveys and offer the updates he wanted.
The silliness of the doge meme and the cult cryptocurrency it spawned belie the potential damage Musk’s Department of Government Effectiveness could do to America’s political infrastructure. Musk has spoken publicly about his desire to massively cut federal spending, admitting that it “involves temporary difficulties.”
While some observers have suggested that Trump is giving Musk a meaningless commission — or a tedious job he can’t screw up — the world’s richest man took part in key meetings And diplomatic phone calls alongside Trump since Election Day. And if Republicans tried to pass, for example, significant cuts to social programs, like Social Security, it could help them politically to rely on the recommendations of an agency or commission like this one .
Musk’s possible future in government
It is then possible that, if Musk runs this department as an external commission rather than as an official government agency, he could probably avoid divesting from his various companies, which have significant government contracts and are also subject to regulatory scrutiny on many fronts. By assuming this role, he will be free to preserve, protect and promote his business interests, potentially by obstructing federal agencies investigating his businesses. The Ministry of Justice, for example, has dedicated last two years investigating Tesla’s dubious claims regarding its “Fully autonomous driving” technology. Between his work DOGE and a likely ally in future Attorney General Matt GaetzMusk might be able to make this expensive headache go away.
All this constitutes a strange and alarming new phase of the “doge” phenomenon. Once a harmless image celebrating our love for adorable four-legged friends, it is now the face of a looming attack on government institutions that enforce financial and labor laws, keep our food and drinking water safe, manage the American education system and preserve natural resources. This, in turn, is causing a cryptocurrency boom that could cost investors tens of thousands of dollars if it turns into another bubble. It doesn’t seem fair that a beloved Shiba Inu has come to represent such political and economic dysfunction, but when Musk takes control of something – whether it’s a company, a campaign presidential election or a meme – he doesn’t often let go.