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."
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."
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 dollar and increased government surveillance.
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.
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 cut 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.
