Much has recently been said about the burgeoning U.S. federal debt and how it’s bullish for hard assets such as bitcoin $BTC$78,432.93 and gold. The problem looks more severe once that debt is weighed against gross domestic product (GDP) and then compared against other nations’.
The U.S. government is running a primary budget deficit of 3.59% of GDP, the largest among major advanced economies, bigger even than Japan’s, according to Bloomberg data shared by The Kobeissi Letter. The primary deficit excludes interest payments on existing debt, measuring only the gap between what the government spends and its revenue. That makes it a cleaner read on fiscal discipline — how much new borrowing results from spending choices rather than the cost of servicing the existing debt.
The message is clear: Spending is out of control.
Robin Brooks, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and former chief economist of the Institute of International Finance, has said repeatedly on his blog that markets are losing patience with high-debt nations, pulling capital away from their assets and toward low-debt safe havens such as Switzerland and Denmark.
The analysis implies accelerated outflows from U.S. assets, with markets demanding ever more compensation for the risk of holding Treasury notes. In other words, yields are more likely to keep climbing, regardless of what the Treasury does to manage them.
Rising yields are typically seen as bearish for stocks, risk assets broadly, and non-yielding assets like gold and bitcoin, since every dollar parked in those assets is a dollar not earning that Treasury yield. That logic, however, holds best when strong growth is what’s pushing yields higher.
When debt fears are the driver instead, bitcoin and gold tend to draw haven demand, exactly as has played out recently. $BTC has gained 23% this month, alongside a 10% rise in gold.
Key data sets this week, such as Friday’s nonfarm payrolls, and resultant changes September Fed interest-rate increase expectations could keep the asset volatile. Stay alert!
Read more: For analysis of today’s activity in altcoins and derivatives, see Crypto Markets Today . For a comprehensive list of events this week, see CoinDesk’s “Crypto Week Ahead.”
What’s trending
- U.S. and Iran exchange strikes after monthlong halt (NYT): For the first time in a month, the U.S. and Iran started exchanging strikes.
- Cronos halts blockchain after $75 million lending exploit hits Tectonic (CoinDesk): Crypto.com-backed network Cronos stopped its network after an attacker inflated the thinly traded TONIC token and borrowed assets against it.
- Bitcoin barely blinks as U.S. hits Iran, sending oil higher and stocks lower (CoinDesk): Bitcoin is holding near $78,000 as renewed U.S.-Iran fighting lifted oil and pressured equities, leaving $BTC up 23% in August.
- Zcash private transactions could go from three-second waits to under 200 milliseconds (CoinDesk): A new open-source cryptography toolkit makes private Zcash transactions more than 14 times faster on mobile devices without requiring a network upgrade.