Can The United States Pay Off Its $37 Trillion Debt With Bitcoin?

According to a report from U.S. Congress' Joint Economic Committee, the federal government's gross national debt reached $37.43 trillion as of September 4, 2025. Considering the national debt surpassed $35 trillion in the summer of 2024, that means we've added $2 trillion more to the federal government's obligations in the matter of a year. And that is already having an impact on services that include shakeups at the Social Security Administration.

But can the federal government's investment in Bitcoin reduce the U.S. government's debt? Yes, says VanEck, a global financial services firm with nearly $133 billion in assets under management. Per the VanEck U.S. Bitcoin Strategic Reserve Calculator, if the U.S. acquires one million BTC by 2029, the U.S. government's debt could be reduced by 18% in 20 years. VanEck further asserts that BTC's compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) is expected to remain at 25%, surpassing the federal debt's CAGR of 5%.

President Donald Trump did decree the creation of a strategic Bitcoin Reserve in a March 2025 executive order, which, as of July, consisted of over 198,000 BTC worth more than $24 billion. But is holding crypto a good idea for the government — or anyone else, for that matter? Despite its meteoric rise, not everyone is optimistic about BTC's long-term growth and value. 

Bitcoin came into existence in 2008, soon after a computer engineer (or engineers) under the alias of Satoshi Nakamoto posted a white paper on the internet called "Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Cash System." In its first known U.S. dollar transaction in October 2009, a bitcoin was worth about one-tenth of one cent. As of September 14, 2025, just after midnight, one bitcoin was worth just over $115,700. This means a $100 investment of bitcoin in 2009 is worth well over $11 billion today. 

A major factor in Bitcoin's value is that only 21 million of this digital blockchain commodity can ever be created, or "mined." And with more than 19.9 million bitcoins already in circulation, not too many more can be mined. That's not to mention that bitcoin mining works through a process involving complicated digital equations, special equipment, and a lot of energy; these requirements make bitcoin mining more challenging over time.

No such ceiling exists for printing U.S. dollars, which is why Brian Armstrong, the CEO of crypto exchange Coinbase posted on X that unless the U.S. government pays down the debt, "... bitcoin is going to take over as reserve currency." The sentiment received an endorsement from that social media network's owner and deficit hawk, multibillionaire Elon Musk.

Not everyone is sold on Bitcoin. Billionaire Bill Gates' warning for anyone buying cryptocurrency is that Bitcoin is too volatile an asset for regular folks to invest in and is far less useful than digital currency backed by nations, per an interview with Bloomberg Technology.

Bitcoin's value has not appreciated consistently since 2009, either. In June 2022, BTC lost more than 32% of its value during a cryptocurrency implosion, where other cryptocurrencies fell in value and $300 billion in assets disappeared, economist and former Clinton cabinet security Robert Reich said (via YouTube). Reich compares crypto to a Ponzi scheme that goes up in value only so long as people, companies, and governments keep putting money into it.

Those pushing for a Bitcoin Reserve do have a vested interest in the cryptocurrency's price heading in an upward direction. VanEck has a Bitcoin ETF with nearly $2.1 billion in assets. President Trump's sons have launched a cryptocurrency venture called American Bitcoin that appeared on the Nasdaq stock exchange in September 2025. Even Tesla, which Elon Musk heads, has a reported $1.3 billion investment in crypto. Yet even as pressure grows for the Federal Reserve to cut interest rates, other investors prefer gold over bitcoin because the latter is seen as too volatile to use as a haven for their money.