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Dogecoin soared on Wednesday after news that the cryptocurrency biggest cheerleader, Elon Muskwill head a “Department of Government Effectiveness” — in effect, a non-governmental group that will consult on spending.
The popular memecoinwhich was created as a joke, was trading at $0.4006 on Wednesday, an increase of more than 15% in the last 24 hours and 121% in the last week.
Musk, the Tesla (TSLA-2.95%) and CEO of SpaceX, will be joined by Vivek Ramaswamy as “outside the government” consultants on federal spending for the new administration of President-elect Donald Trump. DOGE is not actually a government department, but rather a task force that Musk started months ago when he interviewed the republican.
“This will potentially become the ‘Manhattan Project’ of our time,” Trump said in a statement. statementreferring to the program that developed the first nuclear weapons.
Details on DOGE, which is ostensibly an advisory board, remain scarce. Nonetheless, the announcement sparked excitement within the Dogecoin community, which is interested in both the future of the cryptocurrency and Musk’s involvement.
How did Dogecoin achieve overnight success?
Created as a joke by software engineers Billy Markus and Jackson Palmer in 2013, Dogecoin presents the effigy of the Shiba Inu dog popularized in the Doge meme. But since then, Dogecoin has become one of the most valuable cryptocurrencies in the world.
Doge’s success can be attributed largely to the GameStop saga when a group of small investors, encouraged by the Reddit community “WallStreetBets” and helped by a Elon Musk tweetscaused GameStop to skyrocket (GME+4.04%) shares at $86.88 in January 2021.
On Reddit, investors then discussed the cryptocurrency equivalent to GameStop – and the answer was Dogecoin. Just as GameStop was reaching its peak, Dogecoin began to gain traction, peaking in May 2021 at $0.74 per coin.
When Musk became a proud “Dogefather”
After the GameStop saga, another event caused Dogecoin to explode: Elon Musk tweeted “Doge.” The price of Dogecoin increased significantly and crypto enthusiasts suddenly became interested in Dogecoin.
Later that year, Musk hosted the NBC show (CMCSA-1.30%) “Saturday Night Live” and called himself Dogefather. He continued to promote Dogecoin on various platforms, leading to its inclusion in the top 10 cryptocurrencies by market capitalization.
Musk once said Doge is his favorite cryptocurrency because “it has the best humor and it has dogs.”
Doge has ties to Tesla and SpaceX
Musk made sure to integrate Dogecoin into his electric vehicles and space missions.
At Tesla, Dogecoin can be used to purchase selected goodssuch as Cyberquad for Kids, Giga Texas Belt Buckle and Cyberwhistle. Musk recently alluded to that Dogecoin could be accepted as payment at Tesla in the future.
SpaceX accepted Dogecoin as payment for the postponement of the DOGE-1 lunar mission.
— William Gavin contributed to this article.