In a historic and embarrassing first, an old Reddit meme may become an actual government agency in Donald Trump‘s second term as president, thanks to Elon Musk. Months before Trump’s reelection, the Tesla CEO and Trump megadonor was riffing on X (formerly Twitter) about a possible administration role in something he called the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE. On Tuesday, the president-elect announced he was making that dream a reality, appointing Musk, along with businessman and failed presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, to lead an agency of that very name, which would “pave the way for my Administration to dismantle Government Bureaucracy.”

With that action, Trump turned a more than decade-old meme into a bizarre and powerfully consequential reality for U.S. 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 Reddit, typically with rainbow Comic Sans text that suggested the inner monologue of the dog — or “doge,” as a playful misspelling had it.

A cryptocurrency is born

That same year, two software designers had the idea to parody bitcoin, then gaining traction as the first decentralized cryptocurrency, with a joke coin that would feature the doge meme as its logo: Dogecoin, with the market code DOGE. Despite their satirical intentions, the currency found a dedicated community, which outlived the popularity of the cutesy meme itself, although it long traded at well under a cent. Still, the crypto bubble of 2017-2018 saw a surge in trading and drove the value of the coin to a new peak, and by 2019, Musk himself was tweeting about it. “Dogecoin might be my fav cryptocurrency,” he posted that April. “It’s pretty cool.”

From that point forward, Dogecoin’s fluctuations were unmistakably entangled with Musk’s comments on it. He holds an unspecified amount of the cryptocurrency — with some even speculating that he’s a “whale” who has bought up a huge percentage of the total coins in circulation — and routinely interacts with its main promoters online. The summer of 2020 saw another DOGE buying spree, encouraged by TikTok hype, but the coin really exploded during the GameStop “meme stock” craze of January 2021. Encouraged by tweets and memes from Musk (as well as Snoop Dogg and Gene Simmons), investors pushed it to a new high of $0.08 that February. Musk declared it “the people’s crypto.”

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It continued to surge through April and hit an all-time high of $0.74 in May 2021, when Musk hosted an episode of Saturday Night Live and hawked the currency on Weekend Update — while admitting that crypto was a “hustle.” The price of Dogecoin fell significantly during and after the show. The same week, Musk announced that SpaceX would fund a moon mission entirely with Dogecoin. (That launch has been indefinitely delayed.) Musk continued to spam Twitter with Dogecoin memes and inane posts related to the currency, once typing out the lyrics to the children’s song “Baby Shark” as “Baby Doge, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo.” He also indicated that he had purchased some DOGE for his young son, X Æ A-Xii, and hinted that Tesla might start accepting the currency — it eventually did, though only for merchandise, and the option was later discontinued. Tesla has yet to accept payment for a car in Dogecoin.

After Dogecoin fell back to earth, hitting $0.07 in June 2022, Musk faced a lawsuit for $258 billion from investors who accused him of orchestrating a pyramid scheme by manipulating the price with his tweets, public comments, and the SNL appearance, arguing that these all contributed to a 36,000 percent increase in price before the crash. This complaint was amended several times in the following years to account for other Musk stunts — including the time in April 2023, when, as the new owner of Twitter, he briefly changed the site’s bird logo to the most recognized photo of the “doge” Shiba Inu. That little joke sent Dogecoin 30 percent higher. In August 2024, a judge finally dismissed the investors’ suit, calling Musk’s support of the meme coin “aspirational” rather than “factual.”

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Elon pivots to Trump

By August, Musk was pumping millions of dollars into a Super PAC with the goal of electing Trump and attaining greater influence in Washington. He happened to be aligned with major crypto evangelists, who backed Trump in the belief that he would loosen regulations on the industry. It was at this critical point 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 Efficiency (DOGE).” Musk replied, “That is the perfect name.”

It appears the Trump team agreed, or at least acquiesced to the request as they began preparations to assume the White House. Following the election, Dogecoin predictably spiked again — along with other crypto assets — climbing from $0.15 before Trump’s win to as high as $0.44 when the DOGE agency became official on Tuesday morning. Musk has expressed his own enthusiasm about the “merch” DOGE will sell and vowed: “All actions of the Department of Government Efficiency will be posted online for maximum transparency.” Given his record of broken promises, this one seems unlikely to be fulfilled. Musk previously declared that major changes to the X platform would always be voted on by users, only to do away with such polls and push whatever updates he wanted.

The silliness of the doge meme, and the cult cryptocurrency it spawned, belies the potential damage Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency could wreak on the political infrastructure of the U.S. Musk has spoken publicly about wanting to massively slash federal spending, admitting this would “involve some temporary hardship.”

While some observers have suggested that Trump is giving Musk a meaningless commission — or busywork that he cannot screw up — the world’s richest man has been participating in key meetings and diplomatic phone calls alongside Trump since Election Day. And if Republicans were to try to enact, say, major cuts to social programs, like Social Security, it could help them politically to rely on recommendations from a body or commission like this one.

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Musk’s possible future in the government

Then there’s the possiblity that, if Musk helms this department as an outside commission instead of an official government agency, he can likely avoid divesting from his various companies, which have significant government contracts and are also facing regulatory scrutiny on many fronts. By taking on this role, he will be free to preserve, protect, and boost his corporate interests, potentially by hobbling the federal agencies probing his businesses. The Department of Justice, for example, has spent the past two years investigating Tesla’s dubious claims about its “Full-Self Driving” technology. Between his DOGE job and a likely ally in prospective Attorney General Matt Gaetz, Musk may be in a position to make this costly headache go away.

All of which makes for a strange and alarming new phase of the “doge” phenomenon. Once a harmless image celebrating our love of adorable furry friends, it is now the face of an impending assault on the government institutions that enforce financial and labor laws, keep our food and drinking water safe, manage the U.S. education system and conserve natural resources. This, in turn, is spurring 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 should come to represent such political and economic dysfunction, but when Musk wrests control of something — whether a company, a presidential campaign, or a meme — he doesn’t often let go.