294-Day Experiment Ends: The Life and Death of the Political Dogecoin DOGE Department

A government department named after Dogecoin, debuting with Musk’s chainsaw and the slogan “Remaking America”—and then, 294 days later, quietly fading away.

That’s the complete lifecycle of DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency). Yes, you read that right: the same acronym as Dogecoin, directly copying its code and featuring the Shiba Inu mascot on its official website. Recently, U.S. Office of Personnel Management Director Scott Cooper publicly confirmed: it no longer exists.

294 days. That number brings to mind those flash-in-the-pan meme projects in the crypto market—hype comes fast, disappears even faster.

A Political Meme Experiment

On January 20, 2025, the day Trump took office, he signed an executive order creating the DOGE department. The name alone had the crypto community in stitches. Musk has always been Dogecoin’s top promoter, and this time he embedded crypto culture directly into the political arena, playing the game openly.

Website design? Classic crypto style. Shiba Inu logo, Dogecoin symbol, directly deconstructing the seriousness expected of a government agency. Musk even posted a photo on X holding a chainsaw, captioned “A chainsaw for bureaucracy”—the exact same playbook as when he hyped Dogecoin.

Traditional government agencies are about rules, procedures, stability. DOGE? It’s about narrative, symbolism, breaking boundaries. This wasn’t just an agency; it was a social media-driven political experiment.

Silicon Valley Tactics Crash Washington

Operations were even more outrageous. Musk recruited about 50 young people in their twenties, dressed in hoodies and jeans, nicknamed “kid soldiers.” Fueled by Red Bull, this crew embedded themselves in major federal agencies within three weeks, monitoring fund flows and scrutinizing contract projects.

Their core tool was AI. From contract allocations to employee reimbursements, everything was digitized and fed into AI for rapid analysis to spot waste. For example, when they found underutilized government office space, they immediately terminated leases, saving $150 million.

This “move fast and break things” Silicon Valley spirit was a bombshell in Washington’s political ecosystem. DOGE required federal employees to submit weekly reports—fail to do so, and you were considered resigned; miss work, and you were put on administrative leave. Aggressive, but it sparked enormous backlash.

Narrative Collapse

The initial ambitions were grand. Musk claimed he would cut $2 trillion from the federal budget, and Ramaswamy even proposed optimizing 70% of federal government employees. These numbers sounded just like the exaggerated promises in crypto project whitepapers—meant to grab attention and create buzz.

Reality? DOGE claimed to have cut about $160 billion in spending—not even one-fifth of Musk’s previously announced target.

Even more ironically, the Senate investigative subcommittee’s Democratic members released a report stating that DOGE “wasted” more than $21 billion in six months. Department of Energy loan programs were frozen, costing the government about $263 million in interest income; USAID was paralyzed, resulting in $110 million worth of food and medicine rotting in warehouses.

A severe gap emerged between grand narrative and actual execution.

Legal problems soon followed. Democratic attorneys general in 14 states sued Musk and Trump, alleging Trump’s grant of powers to Musk was unconstitutional. DOGE faced nearly 20 lawsuits, including violations of the Privacy Act and unauthorized access to sensitive government data.

Quiet Exit

This May, Musk announced his resignation from DOGE and publicly broke with Trump over legislative issues. By summer, DOGE staff gradually withdrew from headquarters, and security posts and authorization signage disappeared.

This month, Cooper publicly confirmed for the first time that DOGE no longer exists, its functions absorbed by the Office of Personnel Management. The government-wide hiring freeze, once DOGE’s signature initiative, also ended.

DOGE team members have found new roles within the government. Airbnb co-founder Joe Gebbia now heads the National Design Studio; Zachary Terrell serves as CTO at the Department of Health and Human Services. This symbolizes that DOGE’s experimental attempt has concluded, though some of its ideas are being assimilated into traditional government structures.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis commented on X: “DOGE fought the Swamp, but the Swamp won.” This political meme coin experiment ultimately ended with a victory for conventional political structures.

The Infiltration of Symbolic Economy

DOGE’s dissolution is not the end. It marks the irreversible integration of crypto culture and traditional politics. In the future, we may see more political institutions and governance models with “crypto-native” characteristics.

The key is balance. How do we combine the innovative spirit of the crypto world with the stability of traditional governance to create new models that are both symbolically appealing and substantively effective?

Narrative is a powerful tool for building consensus, but narratives detached from technical implementation and value creation are just castles in the air. When the hype around meme symbols fades, what truly remains in the industry are those technologies and projects that solve real problems.

DOGE’s 294 days gave the crypto community a vivid lesson: symbols can attract attention in the short term, but lasting value can only be achieved through real execution.