The United States has seen its national debt soar by over half a trillion dollars in the mere span of two weeks, according to the most recent statistics from FiscalData. The debt rose while BTC prices fell as the SEC sued leading cryptocurrency exchanges, but BTC has since recovered to be up nearly 10% for the month.
As of June 15th, the American debt load has swollen to a staggering $32.03 trillion, marking an increase of $571 billion from the $31.46 trillion recorded on June 1st. In an unsettling comparison, the total debt of the United States now surpasses the combined Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of economic powerhouses including China, Japan, Germany, and the United Kingdom. This massive debt load equates to a debt burden of $244,000 per American household.
Given the current interest rates, the nation is shelling out over $2 billion per day solely in interest payments. In a hypothetical scenario, even if each American household contributed $1,000 per month to debt reduction, it would still take two decades to completely eliminate this burden, according to the Peter G. Peterson Foundation.
The country’s mounting debt has not gone unnoticed and has emerged as a topic of intense discussion among analysts and laypeople alike. However, the general consensus among experts is that the debt situation is likely to worsen over the next decade, as Daily Hodl reported.
According to Charlie Bilello, Chief Marketing Strategy at Creative Planning, the U.S. national debt has risen by 45% over the past four years, or by $10 trillion.
According to Bilello, the U.S. national debt was at 31% of the country’s Gross Domestic Product back in 1980, and hit 101% in 2015 as it keeps on growing. Today, it’s at 121% and the trend appears to show no signs of reversing.
Against this backdrop of rising national debt, an increasing number of investors are turning to Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies as a potential safeguard against economic instability. Bitcoin, unlike traditional fiat currencies, has a maximum supply of 21 million, introducing a degree of scarcity that some investors find appealing.
This contrasts sharply with fiat currencies, where central banks can increase the money supply, a factor that can lead to inflation and devaluation over time. Bitcoin’s decentralized nature allows it to be independent of any single government or entity, making it resistant to direct political or economic interference.
Given these features, many have adopted BTC during times of uncertainty, which has partly helped the cryptocurrency’s price touch the $29,000 mark this week, amid a series of spot Bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF) filings from financial giants including BlackRock and Invesco.
These filings come weeks after the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) sued leading cryptocurrency exchanges Binance and Coinbase for alleged securities law violations.
Whales have however been undeterred. As CryptoGlobe reported, over the last 11 weeks, wallets holding between 1,000 to 10,000 BTC have seen a combined increase of $3.5 billion.
Featured image via Unsplash.
