Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong is offering a new home for staffers departing the U.S. government’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).

On social media, Armstrong encouraged former DOGE operatives to apply for roles at the crypto exchange through a fast-track hiring process.

The move came after a Fox News clip featuring Ethan Shaotran, a 22-year-old former DOGE staffer and Harvard dropout, who said his work with DOGE cost him friendships and status on campus. Shaotran praised the team’s mission and work ethic, describing their late-night dedication to trimming bureaucratic waste.

“If you are looking for your next mission after serving your country, consider helping create a more efficient financial system for the world at Coinbase,” Armstrong wrote in a post on X, attaching a job application form aimed at former DOGE employees.

DOGE, launched under President Donald Trump’s administration and led by Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, was created to streamline federal operations. The agency said it has saved $170 billion through asset sales, contract and lease cancelations, workforce reductions and more.

Coinbase’s embrace of former DOGE staff comes after Armstrong publicly supported the idea of DOGE and called for the end of the income tax.

Coinbase spent over $70 million in 2024 supporting crypto-friendly political action committees and recently added Trump campaign co-manager Chris LaCivita to its advisory board. The company’s shares have recently jumped over news they are being included in the S&P 500 index.

CoinDesk Indices presents its daily market update, highlighting the performance of leaders and laggards in the CoinDesk 20 Index.

The CoinDesk 20 is currently trading at 3335.09, down 1.0% (-34.87) since 4 p.m. ET on Tuesday.

One of 20 assets is trading higher.

Leaders: XRP (+0.9%) and AVAX (-0.1%).

Laggards: UNI (-6.8%) and APT (-4.6%).

The CoinDesk 20 is a broad-based index traded on multiple platforms in several regions globally.

Speculative bets are piling into XRP and dogecoin (DOGE) futures even as spot prices show signs of losing momentum, signaling rising appetite for volatility and downside risk.

In the past week, DOGE futures open interest surged from $989 million to $1.62 billion, a 63.9% jump, according to data from on-chain analytics firm Glassnode. DOGE is up nearly 40% in the past week and trades just over 23 cents on Wednesday.

“This decoupling suggests persistent speculative positioning, even as price momentum fades — a setup worth monitoring,” Glassnode noted in an X post late Tuesday.

A similar trend is playing out in XRP, where open interest rose by over $1 billion, or a 41.6% increase over the same period. Unlike DOGE, XRP has seen relatively lower spot gains, rising from around $2.14 to $2.6 in the past week.

Both cases indicate a broader uptick in derivatives-fueled speculation, particularly in high-beta assets. When open interest rises alongside (or in the absence of) price action, it often reflects traders positioning aggressively for upside.

However, this sets the stage for sharper liquidations if sentiment flips, leading to hundreds of millions wiped out in hours as a liquidation event earlier this week showed.

Open interest tracks the total value of outstanding futures contracts and is widely used as a proxy for speculative activity. When paired with flat or fading price action, rising OI can signal that leverage is outpacing conviction — a pattern that has preceded flash crashes in the past.

Earlier this year, DOGE futures set record highs as some traders speculated on a $1 DOGE in 2025. That narrative has cooled, but the current surge in futures bets indicates that memecoin and XRP exposure remains high-risk, high-reward territory.