• Amid the post-election cryptocurrency rally, dogecoin's market value has surpassed that of companies like Ford and General Mills.

• Tesla CEO Elon Musk has repeatedly promoted dogecoin and spent millions in support of President-elect Donald Trump's campaign.

• Trump on Tuesday said Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy will lead an advisory "Department of Government Efficiency," of DOGE.

The price of dogecoin (DOGEUSD, DOGE) surged on Wednesday after President-elect Donald Trump appointed backers Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy to lead a new "Department of Government Efficiency," or DOGE.

An individual dogecoin was worth around 40 cents Wednesday afternoon, up from 36 cents overnight and about 17 cents before the results of the presidential election were known last Tuesday. The coin's surge has pushed its market cap to about $60 billion, making the original meme coin more valuable than household names like Ford (F), Delta Air Lines (DAL), and General Mills (GIS).

Cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin (BTCUSD) and the stocks of crypto companies like Coinbase (COIN) have also surged in the last week. Executives across the industry have cheered Trump's win, saying they think a Trump administration is likely to be friendly to the crypto industry.

Musk has been a longtime fan of dogecoin, which was born out of a photo of a Shiba Inu that became a recurring joke on the internet in the 2010s. The Tesla (TSLA) CEO has frequently taken to social media to promote the coin; he was accused in a now-dismissed lawsuit of inflating the coin's value for personal gain.

Tesla in January 2022 began accepting dogecoin as a form of payment for some products in its online shop.

Musk embraced Trump's candidacy this year. The political action committee (PAC) he created spent at least $200 million in support of the Trump campaign leading up to last week's election. Musk, also the CEO of SpaceX and other firms, has said he wants to help Trump cut $2 trillion in government spending in the coming years.

On Tuesday, Trump announced that Musk and entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, a former rival for the Republican party's presidential nomination, will co-head a "Department of Government Efficiency," a likely nod to dogecoin.

Trump said Tuesday that the department will "pave the way for my Administration to dismantle Government Bureaucracy, slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures, and restructure Federal Agencies."