Friday Nov 15 2024 03:28
4 min
Dogecoin is making headlines after President-elect Donald Trump announced the creation of the Department of Government Efficiency on X this past Wednesday.
Trump Proposes Unofficial 'DOGE' Department Amidst Surge in Meme Coin Value
This meme coin was valued at 16 cents on Election Day and has since more than doubled, reaching a peak of nearly 39 cents earlier today. However, according to CoinMarketCap, it is still less than half its all-time high of nearly 69 cents from May 2021.
The unofficial department associated with this coin shares the same acronym: DOGE. Trump announced that the new advisory body will be led by Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, a former Republican presidential candidate. The department’s primary goal will be to explore ways to cut government spending and implement "large-scale structural reform."
Although this department has been proposed, it doesn't yet exist and is unlikely to become an official government entity. Creating an official department would require an act of Congress.
Elon Musk has long been a vocal supporter of Dogecoin. Following his new role as co-head of the proposed "DOGE" department, the cryptocurrency saw a sharp increase in value on Wednesday, continuing to stay elevated with minor fluctuations since then.
"Elon Musk's appointment to head the Department of Government Efficiency, also known as DOGE, has driven a surge in Dogecoin investments," said Andrew Lunardi, a digital currency expert and head of chain adoption at Immutable, a crypto gaming company.
Musk's public statements and tweets have previously boosted Dogecoin’s value, and both investors and experts like Lunardi anticipate that if Musk continues to promote the meme coin, its value could rise even further.
After reaching its peak in May 2021, Dogecoin experienced a significant drop but has remained relatively stable since the summer of 2022. However, it saw a slight increase earlier this year, followed by its recent surge.
Dogecoin surges amid Trump’s Pro-Crypto Agenda, dogecoin was created as a fork of Bitcoin, using a similar code base with a few key differences—most notably, Dogecoin has no supply cap, unlike Bitcoin’s fixed limit of 21 million coins.
This week, Dogecoin’s price has returned to levels not seen since the 2021 crypto boom driven by Elon Musk. Musk’s comments on Bitcoin, cryptocurrencies, and Dogecoin in 2021 contributed to a speculative crypto bubble, which later burst. Musk faced legal scrutiny over claims that he and Tesla had inflated Dogecoin’s price into a $258 billion "pyramid scheme," but a judge dismissed the lawsuit earlier this year.
Both Tesla and Musk’s aerospace company, SpaceX, accept Dogecoin as payment for certain products, and Musk has publicly stated that he personally holds some of the meme-based cryptocurrency.
Now, as Musk has been appointed by U.S. president-elect Donald Trump to lead the newly proposed Department of Government Efficiency—nicknamed "Doge" after the meme behind Dogecoin—he’s also warned that inflation could lead to the "destruction" of the U.S. dollar.
Musk, who actively campaigned for Trump ahead of the election, is now part of a group of pro-Bitcoin and crypto advisors surrounding the president-elect. This shift has contributed to a rise in Bitcoin’s price as traders anticipate a potential easing of crypto regulations under the new administration. Trump has even floated ideas like creating a U.S. Bitcoin strategic reserve, predicting that Bitcoin’s value could eventually surpass gold, and using it to help pay down the nation’s $35 trillion debt.
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