In brief
- Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong has invited former DOGE staff to apply for roles via an accelerated hiring track.
- The move comes after a Fox News segment went viral featuring DOGE operative Ethan Shaotran, who described becoming a pariah at Harvard.
- Armstrong’s outreach deepens Coinbase’s post-election alignment with Trump’s pro-crypto administration.
Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong has thrown his support behind former staffers from the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), an agency formed under President Donald Trump’s second administration.
On Tuesday afternoon, Armstrong retweeted a viral Fox News clip of 22-year-old Ethan Shaotran, a Harvard dropout and DOGE member.
In the video, Shaotran recounted how he had lost friends and social standing as a result of his employment at the agency.
“Most of campus hates me,” Shaotran said. “I hope people realize through conversations like this that reform is genuinely needed.”
Shaotran later lauded the dedication of the DOGE team, noting that they work tirelessly, often until 2am every day of the week, without weekends.
For Shaotran, the value and impact of DOGE’s work was “so much more vast than anything you could learn in a classroom doing computer science.”
But Armstrong’s post wasn’t just a retweet of the viral video—it came with an offer for ex-DOGE staffers to work at Coinbase.
“If you are looking for your next mission after serving your country, consider helping create a more efficient financial system for the world,” Armstrong said.
Below his main post, Armstrong provided a link.
“If your last mission is complete, let’s talk about what you can build next,” the hiring form reads.
DOGE days
Armstrong’s statements roughly two weeks after Elon Musk sought to distance himself from DOGE amid protests.
“It is funny that we’ve got DOGE,” Musk said during a Cabinet meeting held at the White House on April 30.
“Doesn’t the absurdity of that seem, like, like, are we in a simulation here or what’s going on? But, like, it was a meme coin at one point,” Musk said, bemused. “How did we get here?”
Musk, along with Vivek Ramaswamy, led DOGE after Trump signed an executive order on January 20, officially renaming the United States Digital Service as the United States DOGE Service (USDS). Since official government departments can only be established through an act of Congress, its full name, the Department of Government Efficiency, is something of a misnomer.
DOGE’s goal was to reduce federal spending by $2 trillion by eliminating unnecessary agencies and programs. To date, DOGE claims to have saved $170 billion, though news organizations have called into question “discrepancies” in its reporting, noting that as of its most recent update on May 11, only $70.9 billion of its reported savings are itemized.
Staffed mostly by young tech-savvy operatives, DOGE faced scrutiny early on due to security issues, the hack on Ramaswamy’s X account, and unauthorized access to the Treasury. In January, Musk claimed that DOGE was exploring blockchain-based tech.
Coinbase and Trump
Armstrong’s invitation to ex-DOGE staffers comes as Coinbase has become increasingly open about its political stance.
The company spent over $70 million backing Trump-friendly crypto PACs in 2024.
Coinbase joined other crypto companies and venture capital firms to back Trump, with an estimated total of $300 million in crypto money shifting American politics.
In January, Coinbase welcomed Trump’s campaign co-manager Chris LaCivita to its advisory board after Trump’s inauguration.
Soon after, the SEC dropped a slew of lawsuits against crypto firms, including Coinbase’s in February.
Decrypt has reached out to Coinbase for comments about Armstrong’s invitation and will update this article should it respond.
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