Elon Musk’s post on law enforcement taking actions against Reddit users targeting DOGE employees sparked a 5% rise in his favorite coin.
On Feb. 4, Head of Department of Government Efficiency Elon Musk responded to a post from a popular Reddit account, Reddit Lies, exposing multiple anonymous Reddit users for threatening employees of the Musk-led department with violence. A lot of the posts call for the execution of said employees and hints at targeting them by finding out where they live.
Musk shared the post with his followers with the caption “They [Reddit users] have broken the law” by threatening employees linked to the new department.
Not long after, Musk shared a follow-up post which included a statement from the U.S. Attorney District of Columbia, Edward R. Martin Jr. In the post, Martin Jr. stated that his team has done an initial review of the evidence showcasing individuals and groups explicitly targeting DOGE employees.
“We are in contact with FBI and other law enforcement partners to proceed rapidly. We also have our prosecutors preparing,” said Martin Jr. in a public statement, accompanied by Musk saying “Don’t mess with DOGE.”
The buzz surrounding DOGE online has evidently boosted its token-namesake, Dogecoin (DOGE). According to data from crypto.news, DOGE has gone up more than 5% in the past 24 hours. The Shiba Inu coin is currently trading hands at $0.27.
However, trading activity for DOGE has gone down. In the past 24 hours, Dogecoin’s trading volume has gone down by more than 43% to $6 billion. Dogecoin’s market cap stands at $40 billion and its circulating supply is at 147 billion tokens.
In November 2024, Donald Trump announced a new initiative aimed at streamlining federal operations, naming the program the Department of Government Efficiency. The acronym “DOGE” is a nod to Dogecoin’s ticker, which also happens to be Elon Musk’s favorite cryptocurrency.
Elon Musk was chosen to lead DOGE alongside politician Vivek Ramaswamy. However, Ramaswamy had declared he would be stepping down from the role on Jan. 21.
