Dalio frames the US fiscal position as late-cycle and dangerously self-reinforcing. “The great excesses that are now projected as a result of the new budget will likely cause a debt-induced heart-attack in the relatively near future—I’d say three years, give or take a year or two,” he wrote. He quantified the near-term squeeze in stark terms, citing “about $1 trillion a year in interest” and “about $9 trillion needed to roll over the debt,” alongside roughly “$7 trillion” in spending versus “$5 trillion” in revenues, requiring “an additional roughly $2 trillion in debt.” That expanding supply, he argued, collides with weakening demand when investors question whether bonds “are good storeholds of wealth.”
Within that late-cycle schema, Dalio placed crypto squarely in the “hard currency” bucket. “Crypto is now an alternative currency that has its supply limited,” he wrote. “If the supply of dollar money rises and/or the demand for it falls, that would likely make crypto an attractive alternative currency.” He tied the recent “rises in gold and cryptocurrency prices” to “reserve currency governments’ bad debt situations,” and reiterated his long-running focus on “storeholds of wealth.”
On whether crypto could “meaningfully replace the dollar,” he emphasized mechanics over labels, noting that “most fiat currencies, especially those with large debts, will have problems being effective storeholds of wealth and will go down in value relative to hard currencies,” a pattern he said echoed the 1930–1940 and 1970–1980 episodes.
By 2020–2021 he began calling Bitcoin “one hell of an invention,” acknowledged owning a small amount, and increasingly framed it as a portfolio diversifier that rhymes with digital gold, while still stressing its volatility and policy sensitivities. With his latest remarks, Dalio puts the entire crypto market inside the monetary hierarchy he uses to analyze late-cycle dynamics.
At press time, the total crypto market cap stood at $3.79 trillion.
