Keiser’s claim was prompted by a salvo of posts from Musk condemning the Republican “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” a sweeping reconciliation measure that would extend the 2017 tax cuts and raise the statutory debt ceiling by roughly $5 trillion. The Congressional Budget Office’s score shows that the bill would widen primary deficits by about $2.4 trillion over the next decade, swelling to roughly $3 trillion once interest costs are included.
While Musk’s figures reflect forward-looking calculations rather than the Treasury’s official $909 billion net-interest line-item for fiscal 2024, the direction is corroborated by CBO projections that put annual net-interest outlays above $950 billion next year and well past $1.8 trillion by 2035 if policy remains unchanged.
The exchange that lit up Bitcoin circles came when Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong posted: “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. I love Bitcoin, but a strong America is also super important for the world. We need to get our finances under control.”
Bitcoiners quickly seized on the signal. Investor Cory Bates urged, “It’s time to utter the safe word,” reviving Musk’s 2020 quip “Bitcoin is my safe word.” Joe Burnett of Unchained Capital said Musk was “incredibly close to fully embracing a Saylor-like bitcoin treasury strategy with Tesla, SpaceX, and X.”
Analyst Will Clemente mused that Musk’s “Bitcoin maxi arc [is] next,” while Anthony Pompliano argued that the “biggest middle finger Elon Musk could give to the establishment politicians hell bent on wasting taxpayer money would be to publicly buy billions of dollars of Bitcoin.” Author Adam Livingston added that BTC “neutralizes debt slavery by anchoring capital to finite, incorruptible energy … you can’t inflate 21 M.”
Whether this episode represents a genuine ideological shift or another of Musk’s high-visibility thought experiments remains uncertain. What is clear is that the billionaire’s critique of US debt dynamics now echoes core talking points of Bitcoin’s most uncompromising proponents.
At press time, BTC traded at $104,709.
