Elon Musk, the Tesla billionaire who tops Forbes’ rankings of the world’s richest people (at least for now), has flung himself back into his day job since leaving president Donald Trump’s White House.
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Musk, who now holds $1.3 billion worth of bitcoin on Tesla’s balance sheet, helped Trump get reelected with his campaign rally warnings of looming financial disaster before quitting the administration amid a row over government spending and promising to create his own bitcoin-backing political party.
Now, after quietly signaling support for his “only” cryptocurrency, Musk has issued yet another warning over the spiraling $37 trillion U.S. debt pile.
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Tesla billionaire Elon Musk has repeatedly warned the U.S. is hurtling toward a financial crisis as a result of its $37 trillion debt pile—confirming speculation bitcoin is a viable alternative earlier this year.
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“At the end of the day, our national debt, which is insanely high … the interest payments exceed the Defence Department, I guess … sorry, War Department … budget and it’s rising, so if AI and robots don’t solve our national debt, we’re we’re toast,” Musk said during an interview at the All In Summit.
The U.S. debt pile has surged to $37 trillion this year, as a combination of huge Covid-era spending and higher interest rates contribute to what some fear could become a “crisis” for the U.S. dollar.
“The government is basically unfixable,” Musk added, later sharing a clip of the interview on the social media platform X that he bought and rebranded from Twitter.
Following his explosive exit from Trump’s White House, Musk confirmed wild rumors and speculation that his new America Party could adopt bitcoin, replying to an X user that asked: “Will America Party embrace bitcoin?”
“Fiat is hopeless, so yes,” Musk wrote, sending the bitcoin price higher, and referring to government-backed currencies known as fiat, rather than asset-backed currencies, which the dollar was before it abandoned the gold standard.
In June, Musk restarted his campaign against out-of-control U.S. government spending, backing a warning that bitcoin could “take over” from the U.S. dollar as the world’s reserve currency and leading to a public falling out with Trump over the president’s signature Big Beautiful Bill that is expected to add around $3 trillion the national debt.
“If the electorate doesn’t hold Congress accountable to reducing the deficit, and start paying down the debt, bitcoin is going to take over as reserve currency,” Brian Armstrong, the chief executive of crypto exchange Coinbase, posted to X in comments shared by Musk.
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The bitcoin price has rocketed higher this year, hitting an all-time high of $124,000 per bitcoin amid stark warnings from the likes of Tesla billionaire Elon Musk over the huge U.S. debt pile.
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Meanwhile, the increasingly unmanageable debt load has sparked wild speculation the U.S. government could try to “erase its massive debt at the world’s expense” and reset the financial system in its favor.
“The U.S. is now trying to rewrite the rules of the gold and cryptocurrency markets,” Anton Kobyakov, a top advisor to Russia’s president Vladimir Putin, said at the Eastern Economic Forum in comments translated by Russia Direct and posted to X. “Remember the size of their debt—$35 trillion. These two sectors (crypto and gold) are essentially alternatives to the traditional global currency system.”
Last year, during the election campaign, Trump floated the possibility of using bitcoin to pay off the U.S.’s $35 trillion debt pile, telling Fox Business that, “maybe we’ll pay off our $35 trillion, hand them a little crypto check, right?”