Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has saved US taxpayers $36.7 billion, prompting calls from crypto industry leaders for greater transparency in government spending through blockchain technology.
According to Doge-tracker data, the savings represent just 1.8% of Musk’s goal to reduce US government spending by up to $2 trillion. Musk outlined this vision during a Jan. 9 interview with political strategist Mark Penn.
Applauding the Musk-led agency’s progress, Brian Armstrong, Coinbase’s co-founder and CEO, took to social media to call for more transparency around government spending.
“Great progress DOGE,” Armstrong wrote in a Feb. 9 X post:
“Imagine if every government expenditure was done transparently onchain. Would make it much easier to audit.”
The distributed blockchain can offer a more transparent foundation for financial systems since decentralized blockchain ledgers are publicly verifiable in real time by anyone with an internet connection.
A potential blockchain-based treasury could also implement mandatory spending proposals, which would only allow a certain transaction if the majority of the population voted on it.
Musk’s DOGE discovers $100 billion loophole, reaches joint agreement with US Treasury
Musk’s non-governmental agency and the US Treasury reached a new joint agreement after discovering a $100 billion yearly loophole in governmental spending.
There were an estimated $100 billion worth of yearly entitlement payments to individuals without a Social Security number or a temporary identity number, which is “extremely suspicious” if proven accurate, wrote Musk in a Feb. 8 X post, adding:
“When I asked if anyone at Treasury had a rough guess for what percentage of that number is unequivocal and obvious fraud, the consensus in the room was about half, so $50B/year or $1B/week!! This is utterly insane and must be addressed immediately.”
The first such criteria will require that all government payments have a payment categorization code, which was “frequently left blank, making audits almost impossible.”
The payments will also have to include a “rationale” which was previously “left blank,” while Musk also pushed for the “DO-NOT-PAY list of entities” to be updated on a weekly or daily basis instead of the current yearly updates.
Musk’s proposal to move the US Treasury to the blockchain could make the US a “de facto global leader in blockchain innovation,” according to Jean Rausis, co-founder of decentralized finance platform Smardex.
He told Cointelegraph:
“While it’s hard to say which blockchain would be up to the task, the important thing is that it is permissionless. Otherwise, the promised transparency would be just a sham. But if the US Treasury embraces decentralized infrastructure, this could be a catalyst for the web2 and web3 worlds to start merging.”
Musk’s agency managed to save taxpayers $36 billion in less than three weeks since the official DOGE website was launched on Jan. 21, Cointelegraph reported.
DOGE’s work is set to conclude on July 4, 2026, with a “smaller government with more efficiency and less bureaucracy.”
A new plan is set to be issued on the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence in the US.
