It started as a joke between a billionaire and a Shiba Inu. Honestly, if you told someone in 2013 that the guy building rockets to Mars would eventually spend his nights tweeting about a "meme coin" and then try to run a government agency named after it, they’d have called you crazy. But here we are in 2026, looking back at the wreckage and the rallies.
Elon Musk and Doge have become inseparable in the public imagination. It’s a weird, chaotic relationship that has moved billions of dollars and, more recently, attempted to move the entire U.S. federal government.
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The Meme That Became a Mission
Most people remember the 2021 hype. The "Dogefather" era. Musk was tweeting memes every few hours, and the price of Dogecoin was vertical. It hit $0.73 before that infamous Saturday Night Live appearance. You remember that? He called it a "hustle" during a sketch, and the price cratered.
But that wasn't the end. Not even close.
Musk’s fascination with the coin was always about more than just the laughs. He’s argued—publicly and repeatedly—that Dogecoin’s inflationary design actually makes it a better currency than Bitcoin. Bitcoin is a store of value; it’s digital gold. You don’t spend gold to buy a coffee. Dogecoin, however, has a fixed number of coins added every year, which Musk believes encourages spending rather than hoarding.
"It’s the people’s crypto," he once said. And he stuck by it, even when the markets turned ugly. Tesla started accepting it for merchandise. SpaceX literalized the meme by announcing the "DOGE-1" Mission to the Moon—a cubesat funded entirely by the cryptocurrency.
The Department of Government Efficiency (D.O.G.E.)
The weirdest twist in this saga happened just last year. When Donald Trump returned to the White House in early 2025, he didn't just bring Musk into the fold; he gave him a job. He created the Department of Government Efficiency, or D.O.G.E.
The name was no accident. It was a massive nod to the community that had supported Musk for years.
Musk walked into Washington with a "chainsaw." Literally. At CPAC in February 2025, he held a chainsaw aloft to symbolize the cuts he planned to make. He talked about trimming $2 trillion from the federal budget. That's a massive number. It’s more than the entire discretionary budget of the United States.
What Actually Happened in D.C.?
The reality of D.O.G.E. was a lot more complicated than a Shiba Inu meme. Musk’s team—mostly young "zealots" from his own companies like SpaceX and X—started moving fast. Too fast, maybe.
They did find some things. Musk pointed out "zombie payments"—the billions of dollars sent out by the government every year without proper documentation. He claimed that by simply requiring a payment code and an explanation, they could save $100 billion to $200 billion annually.
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But then came the chaos.
- Over 200,000 federal workers were laid off or pushed out by May 2025.
- Around 13,000 government contracts were canceled overnight.
- Some agencies, like the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), were practically eviscerated.
By May 30, 2025, Musk had enough. He left Washington. In a podcast interview later that year with former adviser Katie Miller, he sounded... tired. He admitted the effort was only "a little bit successful."
He even said he wouldn't do it again. "I think instead of doing DOGE, I would have basically worked on my companies," he told Miller. "They wouldn't have been burning the cars." He was referring to the vandalism and protests that followed his time in the capital.
The Courtroom Drama
You can't talk about Elon Musk and Doge without mentioning the lawsuits. For years, a group of investors tried to sue him for $258 billion. They claimed he was running a "pyramid scheme" and manipulating the market.
In August 2024, a federal judge in Manhattan finally threw the whole thing out. Judge Alvin Hellerstein basically said that Musk’s tweets—like saying Dogecoin was the "future currency of Earth"—were "puffery." Basically, he meant that no reasonable investor should take a meme tweet as serious financial advice.
The lawsuit was dismissed with prejudice. It’s over. Musk’s lawyer, Alex Spiro, called it a "very good day for dogecoin."
Where Does the Coin Stand Today?
As we move through 2026, Dogecoin is in a weird spot. It’s currently trading around $0.14. That’s a far cry from the $0.70 highs, but it’s still one of the biggest cryptocurrencies in the world.
There's a group called "House of Doge" that’s actually trying to turn it into a serious business. They’ve been building a payments infrastructure and are even eyeing a Nasdaq listing later this year through a merger. They’ve got a treasury with over 730 million DOGE.
But the "Musk Effect" has faded. People are more cautious now. They’ve seen how quickly a tweet can pump a price, and how quickly it can all come crashing down when the billionaire moves on to his next project.
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Real Talk: Should You Still Care?
If you’re looking at Elon Musk and Doge as a get-rich-quick scheme, you’re about four years too late. The era of 36,000% gains is gone.
However, if you're interested in how memes can influence policy and how "tech-bro" culture is trying to rewire the government, it's a fascinating case study.
The Department of Government Efficiency (the agency, not the coin) is scheduled to officially terminate on July 4, 2026. It was designed to be a temporary explosion of efficiency. Whether it actually made the government better or just left it in "disarray," as The Guardian reported, is still being debated in every coffee shop in D.C.
Moving Forward: Actionable Insights
If you’re following this saga for the long haul, keep these things in mind:
- Watch the Utilities, Not the Tweets: The "House of Doge" roadmap for 2026 includes a rewards debit card and B2B payment tools. If Doge is going to survive, it has to be useful for something other than memes.
- Understand the Support Levels: Analysts like Ali Martinez have pointed out that $0.073 is a massive support zone. If it drops below that, the "meme" might finally be over. But as long as it stays above $0.12, the community remains active.
- The Government Legacy: The "D.O.G.E." subcommittee in Congress, currently led by Rep. Tim Burchett, is still trying to carry the torch Musk lit. Watch their reports on "waste and fraud"—they are the lasting political footprint of this whole weird experiment.
The story of Elon Musk and Doge is a reminder that in the 2020s, the line between a joke and a trillion-dollar economy doesn't really exist anymore. It’s all one big, messy, Shiba-Inu-themed reality show.
Next Steps for You: Check the current "whale" activity on the Dogecoin blockchain. Large holders have been accumulating millions of coins during this 2026 consolidation phase, which often precedes a volatility spike. If you're tracking the political side, look up the latest reports from the House Oversight Subcommittee on Delivering on Government Efficiency to see which of Musk's proposed cuts are actually sticking.