Billionaire Elon Musk, tasked by President-elect Donald Trump to rein in the excessive US spending, has warned that America could be nearing the verge of bankruptcy. The world's richest man and a close adviser of Mr Trump, Elon Musk has been tasked to spearhead the newly created Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) under the upcoming Republican administration, to find ways of saving taxpayer dollars.
"America is currently headed for bankruptcy super fast," Mr Musk posted to X (formally Twitter), the social media platform he bought in 2022.
Mr Musk wrote this in response to a post on the Department of Government Efficiency's X handle that noted "the US Government spent USD 6.16. trillion while only bringing in USD 4.47 trillion" in 2023.
"This trend must be reversed, and we must balance the budget," the DOGE account added.
During his election campaign, one of the promises made by President-Elect Trump was the formation of DOGE to dismantle the government bureaucracy and cut wasteful spending. Earlier this year, while talking about skyrocketing US debts, Mr Trump had floated the idea of using Bitcoin to “pay off" "USD 35 trillion".
The President-elect is relying on two successful businessmen -- Mr Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy -- to dig into the details and give recommendations to his administration to restrict spending.
According to a report by Forbes, the national debt of the US crossed the USD 34 trillion mark at the beginning of 2024, largely due to Covid and lockdown stimulus measures that sent inflation spiralling and forced the Federal Reserve to hike interest rates at a historical clip.
Mr Trump said, "..hand them a little crypto check, right? We'll hand them a little bitcoin and wipe out our USD 35 trillion,” according to the Forbes report.
After the Republicans won 'Trifacta' of victories in the US, Mr Musk in a post on X said, “Excess government spending is driving America into bankruptcy,” adding, “This debt growth is unsustainable.”
The name of the DOGE department is a nod to the 2013 famous Shiba Inu dog meme, which is also linked to the dogecoin cryptocurrency. According to Mr Musk, Dogecoin is his "favourite" cryptocurrency and is accepted as payment by his Tesla car company.
Bitcoin is a decentralised digital currency that operates without a financial system or government authorities. According to a report by Investopedia, bitcoin can be used as an alternative to fiat currencies through crypto exchanges, utilizing peer-to-peer transfers on a digital network that records all transactions. This network is powered by a blockchain, an open-source program that chains transaction histories to prevent manipulation.
Bitcoin's price today is USD 97,455.70, which represents a change of +4.31% in the last 24 hours.
