11/12 update below. This post was originally published on November 10
Elon Musk, the Tesla billionaire who hit the campaign trail on behalf of U.S. president-elect Donald Trump, has been warning recently over a looming “financial emergency.”
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Musk’s fear over the U.S.’s spiraling $35 trillion debt pile comes as the bitcoin price has surged—outpaced by the price of the meme-based bitcoin rival dogecoin that’s boomed thanks to Musk’s backing of the Department Of Government Efficiency, nicknamed Doge.
Now, as questions swirl around whether Trump could use bitcoin to “wipe out” U.S. debt, Musk has called U.S. debt growth “unsustainable.”
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Forbes‘Huge Things Coming’—Bitcoin Suddenly Explodes As Secret ‘Nation-State’ Adoption Mystery Rumors Fuel A Crypto Price BoomBy Billy Bambrough
Tesla billionaire Elon Musk’s fears over the spiraling U.S. debt pile come as the bitcoin price … [+] soars following Donald Trump’s election victory.
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“Excess government spending is driving America into bankruptcy,” Musk posted to X, the social media platform he bought and rebranded from Twitter, adding: “This debt growth is unsustainable.”
Musk was replying to bitcoin-backing Kentucky senator Rand Paul, who called the “status quo of $2 trillion annual deficits unsustainable.”
Paul made headlines in 2015 when he began accepting bitcoin campaign donations to support his Republican White House bid—with Donald Trump and many other 2024 candidates following suit—and in 2021 said in an interview he believed crypto could replace the U.S. dollar due to a lack of confidence in the currency and increased government surveillance.
11/12 update: The combined crypto market has blown past $3 trillion, according to Coingecko data, eclipsing its pandemic-era peak despite interest in crypto from the general public remaining well below the levels it reached in 2021.
A market wobble this morning failed to much knock bitcoin far from its latest peak of just under $90,000, with the bitcoin price falling to $85,000 before bouncing back to over $87,000.
Dogecoin has rocketed 36% over the last 24 hours as traders bet big on Tesla billionaire and dogecoin-backer Elon Musk having a major influence on U.S. president-elect Donald Trump and leaving bitcoin’s paltry 7% rally in the dust.
“Dogecoin is even more actively destroying skeptics with open positions, “Alex Kuptsikevich, FxPro chief market analyst, said in emailed comments. “In 24 hours, it soared 44% to $0.4. It traded sustainably higher for only 15 days in May 2021. This area was pivotal in April and June that year, so it’s worth paying extra attention to it this time around as well.”
U.S. national debt has skyrocketed in recent years, crossing the $34 trillion mark at the beginning of 2024, largely due to Covid and lockdown stimulus measures that sent inflation spiraling out of control and forced the Federal Reserve to hike interest rates at a historical clip.
Earlier this year, Trump floated the idea he could use bitcoin to “pay off our $35 trillion—hand them a little crypto check, right? We’ll hand them a little bitcoin and wipe out our $35 trillion,” he said.
In July, Trump promised to create a “strategic national bitcoin reserve” and predicted bitcoin could eclipse gold’s $16 trillion market capitalization during an appearance at the Bitcoin 2024 conference.
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ForbesLeak Reveals BlackRock Is Quietly Doubling Down On Bitcoin As The Price Suddenly Rockets Toward $100,000By Billy Bambrough
The bitcoin price has shot higher this week, smashing past its previous all-time high and … [+] approaching $80,000 per bitcoin.
Forbes Digital Assets
Musk’s campaign against excessive U.S. spending has resulted in calls for the creation of the Doge Department Of Government Efficiency, which Musk has said he believes could strip $2 trillion from U.S. spending.
The Doge department is a nod to the shiba inu doge meme that’s also linked to the dogecoin cryptocurrency, named by Elon Musk as his “favorite” cryptocurrency and accepted as payment by his Tesla car company.
Doge’s association with the dogecoin bitcoin rival has caused the dogecoin price to more than double over the last month, with billionaire Mark Cuban joking Musk could put dogecoin in the U.S. Treasury.
