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Is Elon Musk using DOGE to get the Government onto the Blockchain?
It’s not just a US problem. It’s a European Union problem, a British problem, even all the way “down under” in Australia they have 2.517 million government employees[2] (with a population of 26 million that’s a higher per capita government employee number than the US!).
Adam Atlantic
February 18, 2025 • Estimated Reading Time: 5 minutes
The title is the Department of Government Efficiency. But we all know it as DOGE.
Its purpose as per the Executive Order:[1]
“…to implement the President’s DOGE Agenda, by modernizing Federal technology and software to maximize governmental efficiency and productivity.”
Therefore, to modernise federal technology, to maximise efficiency and productivity, you need to cut some bloat – DOGE is cutting bloat and possibly looking to crypto technology to get it done.
Limestone caves and papers
Now let’s call a spade a spade here folks, all governments in the world are inefficient.
It’s not just a US problem. It’s a European Union problem, a British problem, even all the way “down under” in Australia they have 2.517 million government employees[2] (with a population of 26 million that’s a higher per capita government employee number than the US!).
But what the US does have that everywhere else does not (currently) is a DOGE getting to work.
Love it, or hate it, they’re at least seemingly doing something about slashing the burn and upgrading the systems.
If the reports are to be believed, then maybe upgrading the limestone caves where government employees move paper-based government employee files by hand is due for an upgrade to something like… a computer system?
Source: DOGE via X.com[3]
But inefficiencies like this aren’t the only thing that DOGE is uncovering.
They’re finding weird and wild payments and transactions that are going to weird and wild recipients. This started with their tear through of USAID, the Department of Education, and other government services like the Department of Housing and Urban Development.
They even managed to find a “misplaced” $1.9 billion just a few days ago,
Source: DOGE via X.com
It’s scary how easily it seems for government departments to make transactions and payments with little to no transparency.
It shouldn’t take a DOGE to come in and shake things up for the general public to know where their taxpayer dollars are being spent, and where the money goes.
It’s why there’s an increasing theme around the idea of all government payments and transactions being logged and made on a transparent and immutable blockchain.
Taking aim at the Treasury
Earlier today DOGE posted about a single identification code that would help to track treasury payments.
Source: DOGE via X.com
$4.7 trillion of virtually untraceable payments without that identifier. This is how the government has operated for decades. Worth noting, this includes governments from both side of the political divide.
This further gives weight to the idea that Treasury transactions should be on a blockchain. But doing this, all payments would be accessible at any time for the public to see and for appropriate departments to track. The open nature of this would be a level of transparency that no government has ever operated with.
And Elon’s a fan of the idea too.
According to Bloomberg,
Source: Bloomberg.com[4]
And then earlier this month when asked if the Treasury should be put on a blockchain, Musk replied with a resounding, Yes!
Source: Elon Musk via X.com[5]
This idea has plenty of critics. But surely anything that provides complete transparency for government spending is a good thing. How on earth could you argue that transparency isn’t good?
The idea of using a blockchain for complete transparency has been around a while. Many years ago, IBM even began developing blockchain systems for entire supply chains. So, the capacity to do it is there, ready and able to go. It can be done in America, by American companies and even (likely) on an American blockchain.
If that happens, it’s one of the most bullish catalyst we’ll ever see for the entire crypto industry.
Trust in crypto,
Adam Atlantic