General Discussion

Some the MAGAts and other shills were insanely claiming BTC could pay off the entire US national debt.

Bear in mind that there are only 21 million bitcoins possible ever, around 20 million have already been mined, and of that 20 million, 4 to 8 million are lost forever (via lost wallets, people who have died and did not leave the private keys to anyone, people who lost the private keys themselves, etc etc). Taking a conservative guess and saying 5 million are perma-lost, that leaves, atm, only 15 million or so out there. For the US to get to 3 million BTC, they would have to literally buy up 20% or so of all the bitcoins that will ever exist. They also can never come close to selling off 20% of the total supply without crashing the valuation to a massive level.

IF you take a pretty wildly optimistic valuation for BTC (I have seen a $3 million per BTC target by 2030) and assume that the US will end up with 1 million bitcoins (what the crypto bros are calling for), and then take that and and TRIPLE it (to 3 million BTC) that yields a gross valuation of only 9 trillion USD at $3m per BTC and the US somehow getting its hands on 3 million BTC.

The national debt will be over 40 trillion USD by 2030, probably far larger. 9 trillion USD (and that number is extraordinarily unlikely to be able to be realised via selling off the US holdings in toto or anywhere near in toto) will never come close to paying off that ever-increasing US national debt.

It is fantasy-land.

But let's go further......let's take it to a a fairly maximal future forward level.......................

By 2050 or so, counting unfunded liabilities, the US cumulative exposure could easily be closing in on 200 trillion USD (hard debt, plus unfunded liabilities, including massive transfers such as Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, etc).

Let's say that the US somehow (fantasy but let's play this out) ends up with HALF of all BTC that is available. Around 7.5 million bitcoins (and that is IF the number of perma-lost BTC stays at (or even is) only 5 million BTC lost, and that number (ie half of all BTC that is available) may well be, as time goes on, far too small, it may end up at 7 or even 8 million perma-lost BTC, reducing the 7.5m BTC US holding number (if we are saying the US holds HALF of all BTC) down to as low as 6 million BTC)

Let us also project an extraordinary 10 MILLION USD per BTC market valuation, and lets say the US DOES end up with 7.5 million BTC.

That 7.5 million BTC would have a GROSS value (if ALL were liquidated, which again is impossible for reasons stated before) of 75 trillion USD.

Nowhere near paying off the hard national debt (which if we go off current deficit rates, could be around 80 trillion USD by 2050) PLUS covering the the future unfunded liabilities (over 100 trillion USD atm).

And that is with my utterly profound fantasy-land projections of the US holding HALF of all of the entire BTC supply and a ONE HUNDRED-AND-SEVEN -FOLD increase in the price from its current 93,500 or so USD per BTC, plus some the US dumping all 7.5 million BTC it holds (which would eviscerate the entire market)