- Speculations run rife that the proposal of Musk for the Division of Authorities Effectivity’s blockchain adoption would contain the Dogecoin
The Department of Government Efficiency (D.O.G.E.) is now an official agency under US President Donald Trump’s administration. Mirroring the cultural significance of Dogecoin (DOGE), the federal body bearing the same namesake in its acronym started as a meme. However, people soon embraced it, catapulting it into a reality.
With Trump’s earlier campaign promise to reduce government spending, Tesla CEO and X owner Elon Musk proposed the creation of D.O.G.E. as a solution. In the president’s latest executive order (EO) titled “Establishing And Implementing The President’s ‘Department Of Government Efficiency,’” the agency’s purpose is “modernizing federal technology and software to maximize governmental efficiency and productivity.”
D.O.G.E. to Cut Government Expenditures by Trillions
As Trump’s biggest supporter and donor during his bid to return to the White House, the president handed the reigns of D.O.G.E. to Musk. Not wasting the opportunity, Musk has immediately laid down his plan to cut government spending by a trillion dollars up to $6.5 trillion annually.
Along the way, Musk proposed the government’s adoption of blockchain technology to enable transparency, accountability, and security in its payment transactions based on Bloomberg. Likewise, the effort aims to promote efficient resource management on the part of project implementers.
The Department of Government Efficiency recently launched its official government website under a .gov domain. Its administrators have yet to populate the site with content, but it said that it’s dedicated to the people who “voted for major reforms.”
Is Musk Considering the Dogecoin Chain?
Musk and his cohorts have yet to announce the chain that would potentially be the key to carrying out the agenda of D.O.G.E. However, speculations run rife that he could be eyeing the Dogecoin chain. After all, it’s Musk’s fondness for its OG meme coin that drove the creation of the D.O.G.E. agency’s moniker.
From a more fundamental perspective, the Dogecoin blockchain was originally planned by former IBM software engineer Billy Markus and Adobe software engineer Jackson Palmer to run as an alternative to Bitcoin (BTC). With that, the developers designed the network to run peer-to-peer transactions on a decentralized model. Like Bitcoin, its public ledger operates within a community-driven effort and records each transaction in an immutable infrastructure for traceability.
On paper, the Dogecoin blockchain presents itself as a good platform for the D.O.G.E. agenda.
Can the Government Utilize the Dogecoin Token?
Markus and Palmer initially concocted Dogecoin’s native token, DOGE, to pave the way for faster and less expensive payments. For this reason, Dogecoin has no production limit.
Unlike Bitcoin, its supply is constantly increasing, albeit at a fixed rate of 5 billion tokens. However, this value proposition makes it more ideal as a payment medium than a token hoarded by speculators.
The only roadblock to this argument is the DOGE token’s inherent volatility. This trait could spell a significant discrepancy for its USD equivalent during transactions timed within major market price fluctuations and large-scale payments or government transactions. Furthermore, Dogecoin could face opposition due to its energy-intensive Proof of Work (PoW), similar to Bitcoin.
A better alternative would be to use stablecoins. But then again, the government would have to build its own platform for its own stablecoin, which could potentially clash with Trump’s central bank digital currency (CBDC) ban. Meanwhile, piggybacking with existing solutions from Tether (USDT), Ripple USD (RLUSD), or Circle (USDC) could expose it to centralized corporate entities, which could put more conflicts of interest on the table.