Addressing a single executive order from Donald Trump’s voluminous first-day edicts is like singling out one bullet in a burst from an AK-47. But one of them hit me in the gut. That is “Establishing and Implementing the President’s Department of Government Efficiency.’’ The acronym for that name is DOGE (named after a memecoin), and it’s the Elon Musk–led effort to cut government spending by a trillion bucks or two. Though DOGE was, until this week, pitched as an outside body, this move makes it an official part of government—by embedding it in an existing agency that was formerly part of the Office of Management and Budget called the United States Digital Service. The latter will now be known as the US DOGE Service, and its new head will be more tightly connected to the president, reporting to his chief of staff.

The new USDS will apparently shift its former laser focus on building cost-efficient and well-designed software for various agencies to a hardcore implementation of the Musk vision. It’s kind of like a government version of a SPAC, the dodgy financial maneuver that launched Truth Social in the public market without ever having to reveal a coherent business plan to underwriters.

The order is surprising in a sense because, on its face, DOGE seems more limited than its original super ambitious pitch. This iteration seems more tightly centered on saving money through streamlining and modernizing the government’s massive and messy IT infrastructure. There are big savings to be had, but a handful of zeros short of trillions. As of yet, it’s uncertain whether Musk will become the DOGE administrator. It doesn’t seem big enough for him. (The first USDS director, Mikey Dickerson, jokingly posted on LinkedIn, “’I’d like to congratulate Elon Musk on being promoted to my old job.”) But reportedly Musk pushed for this structure as a way to embed DOGE in the White House. I hear that inside the Executive Office Building, there are numerous pink Post-it notes claiming space even beyond USDS’s turf, including one such note on the former chief information officers’ enviable office. So maybe this could be a launch pad for a more sweeping effort that will eliminate whole agencies and change policies. (I was unable to get a White House representative to answer questions, which isn’t surprising considering that there are dozens of other orders that equally beg for explanation.)

One thing is clear—this ends United States Digital Service as it previously existed, and marks a new, and maybe perilous era for the USDS, which I have been enthusiastically covering since its inception. The 11-year-old agency sprang out of the high-tech rescue squad salvaging the mess that was Healthcare.gov, the hellish failure of a website that almost tanked the Affordable Care Act. That intrepid team of volunteers set the template for the agency: a small group of coders and designers who used internet-style techniques (cloud not mainframe; the nimble “agile” programming style instead of the outdated “waterfall” technique) to make government tech as nifty as the apps people use on their phones. Its soldiers, often leaving lucrative Silicon Valley jobs, were lured by the prospect of public service. They worked out of the agency’s funky brownstone headquarters on Jackson Place, just north of the White House. The USDS typically took on projects that were mired in centi-million contracts and never completed—delivering superior results within weeks. It would embed its employees in agencies that requested help, being careful to work collaboratively with the lifers in the IT departments. A typical project involved making DOD military medical records interoperable with the different systems used by the VA. The USDS became a darling of the Obama administration, a symbol of its affiliation with cool nerddom.

During the first Trump administration, deft maneuvering kept the USDS afloat—it was the rare Obama initiative that survived. Its second-in-command, Haley Van Dyck, cleverly got buy-in from Trump’s in-house fixer, Jared Kushner. When I went to meet Kushner for an off-the-record talk early in 2017, I ran into Van Dyck in the West Wing; she gave me a conspiratorial nod that things were looking up, at least for the moment. Nonetheless, the four Trump years became a balancing act in sharing the agency’s achievements while somehow staying under the radar. “At Disney amusement parks, they paint things that they want to be invisible with this certain color of green so that people don’t notice it in passing,” one USDSer told me. “We specialized in painting ourselves that color of green.” When Covid hit, that became a feat in itself, as USDS worked closely with White House coronavirus response coordinator Deborah Birx on gathering statistics—some of which the administration wasn’t eager to publicize.

By the end of Trump’s term, the green paint was wearing thin. A source tells me that at one point a Trump political appointee noticed—not happily— that USDS was recruiting at tech conferences for lesbians and minorities, and asked why. The answer was that it was an effective way to find great product managers and designers. The appointee accepted that but asked if, instead of putting “Lesbians Who Tech” on the reimbursement line, could they just say LWT?

Shiba Inu whales are rotating their profits into PropiChain, betting on its AI features and potential to rise.

Shiba Inu (SHIB) whales make strategic moves by cashing out and rotating profits into new opportunities. As a result, SHIB has experienced a 3.12% dip in the past 24 hours. This shift in focus indicates a growing interest in projects that promise higher returns.

PropiChain (PCHAIN) is catching investors’ attention due to its unique AI features. The project has raised $2 million during the presale, with its token selling at $0.01.

Shiba Inu sees 883% outflows

Shiba Inu experienced a massive 883% increase in outflows, with large investors pulling out over 460 billion SHIB. Between January 15 and 16, the total Shiba Inu outflows grew from 647 billion to 1.11 trillion SHIB. This large-scale movement has left investors worried about its future price movement.

The significant outflows were driven by big investors cashing out and adjusting their positions. Some investors sold out their Shiba Inu holdings to protect their gains. This pushed Shiba Inu to drop, denoting a 10.84% decrease in the past week.

Analysts believe Shiba Inu might have limited upside potential as new meme coins take the spotlight.

Whales bet on PropiChain and its AI features

Shiba Inu whales are betting big on PropiChain’s AI-driven altcoin. The project has raised $2 million during the presale and this is only scratching the surface as new investors join the fold.

At $0.01, PropiChain could be undervalued, making it a favorite among investors in the crypto space.

Its appeal comes from real estate tokenization and fractional ownership features. This will create new opportunities for PropiChain’s users, as many of them will be able to buy portions of properties. The true impact of this model is that it allows them to diversify their portfolios and earn passive income through rental income.

However, PropiChain’s AI features are its secret weapon. The platform will allow for predictive market analysis, helping users spot lucrative real estate investments and capitalize on them before anyone else.

With its automated valuation models, users will benefit from fair and accurate property appraisals. This will allow buyers and sellers to close real estate deals faster as the pricing is provided by AI algorithms.

Additionally, smart contracts will be used to automate transactions such as auto-leasing and lease renewals. This process handles transactions on behalf of landlords and tenants, improving efficiency and reducing costs.

PropiChain also incorporates the metaverse for virtual property viewing, allowing users to walk through properties in the digital space.

To maintain the safety of users and investors, PropiChain’s smart contracts have been rigorously audited by BlockAudit, a reputable Web3 security firm.

Shiba Inu and PCHAIN in 2025

While Shiba Inu has surged thanks to the hype around meme coins, PropiChain is counting on its AI features for a significant edge in 2025.

The new altcoin is also benefiting from bull market rotations, where smart money rotates their profits from established altcoins. With a growing community of investors, PropiChain could be the dark horse of this bull market.

Investors scoop the PCHAIN token

PCHAIN could currently be one of the most undervalued tokens in the market. At $0.01, PropiChain provides growth investors with a low entry for potentially massive gains.

Due to its promising AI features, PropiChain has raised $2 million in its ongoing token presale. This is considered a stepping stone as it has been listed on CoinMarketCap, opening up an avenue to attract more investors. The listing serves as a reminder the AI-driven altcoin is committed to transparency and growth.

For more information on PropiChain, visit their website or online community.

Earthblade, the next game from the developers of Celeste, has been canceled. The fantasy-inspired game got its first trailer in late 2022, and the game would have let you explore a “free-roaming, dynamically-loading map,” Extremely OK Games’ Maddy Thorson said at the time. But the team decided to cancel the game in December after a team conflict and because of the pressure of trying to follow up on Celeste, Thorson says in a post detailing what happened.

The “disagreement” was between Thorson and Noel Berry (Thorson refers to the two of them as “us”) and Pedro Medeiros over “the IP rights of Celeste,” Thorson says. “We eventually reached a resolution, but both parties also agreed in the end that we should go our separate ways,” and Medeiros is currently working on a game called Neverway. “Losing Pedro wasn’t the only factor in cancelling the game, but it did prompt us to take a serious look at whether fighting through to finish Earthblade was the right path forward,” Thorson says.

The huge success of Celeste also “applied pressure on us to deliver something bigger and better with Earthblade, and that pressure is a large part of why working on it has become so exhausting,” Thorson says. “Pedro isn’t to blame for this — in fact the split with him has given us the clarity to see that we have lost our way, and the opportunity to admit defeat.”

Thorson and Berry want to refocus on “smaller-scale projects” and are “prototyping again” to try and “rediscover game development in a manner closer to how we approached it at Celeste’s or TowerFall’s inception.”

Dubai-based crypto market maker CLS Global will plead guilty to charges related to wash trading on the decentralized exchange Uniswap.

Federal prosecutors in Boston announced Wednesday that the company will face market manipulation and wire fraud charges after falling victim to an FBI sting operation.

$428K Fine and U.S. Market Ban

As part of the plea agreement, the financial services firm will pay penalties and forfeited assets totaling over $428,000. The company will also be barred from offering services to U.S. investors and will be required to file annual compliance certifications.

A press release shows that CLS Global had been providing market-making services and other related offerings for crypto companies. The investigation specifically focused on its involvement with NexFundAI, a fake digital currency company set up by the FBI that had token trading on Uniswap.

The firm admitted that it had agreed to provide services for NexFundAI, which included wash trading to fraudulently generate trading volume and attract investors.

During several video conferences between July and August 2024, an employee explained that CLS used an algorithm for self-trading, buying, and selling from multiple wallets so that the activity was not visible and appeared organic. The worker revealed, “I know that it’s wash trading, and I know people might not be happy about it.”

The UAE-based firm then proceeded to buy and sell the token on Uniswap using its own wallets, creating fake trading volume to meet exchange listing requirements and bring in potential investors.

FBI Sting Operation

CLS Global is registered in the United Arab Emirates and has more than 50 employees based outside the U.S. It provided crypto-related services accessible to American investors, with the company’s official website listing partnerships with major centralized exchanges such as Binance, Bybit, KuCoin, Bitfinex, OKX, and Bitget.

The charges against it followed an undercover law enforcement operation targeting crypto “wash trading,” a practice where assets are bought and sold by the same party to create the illusion of market activity.

The company was one of three market makers investigated in the initiative, which also led to charges against several individuals involved in manipulating digital assets that were offered and sold as securities. This case marked the first set of criminal charges against financial services firms for market manipulation and wash trading in the industry.

Meanwhile, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) also filed a related civil enforcement action against CLS Global, alleging violations of securities laws. The agency is seeking permanent injunctions, disgorgement of allegedly ill-gotten gains plus interest, and civil penalties, with any money seized from the crypto firm credited to the SEC resolution.