This is a story about money.

Specifically, the US dollar.

More specifically, the US dollar and its secret, desperate, cunning…

Maybe-genius, maybe-insane plan to survive.

But let’s rewind. 

The Setup

In 2001, America looked at China and said, “Hey, you guys have a billion people. You can make iPhones cheaper than we can. How about we do the ‘smart’ work and you do the ‘hard’ work?”

China, being a polite guest at the World Trade Organization, nodded.

It got to work while America’s coastal elites sipped $9 oat milk lattes, high-fived, and watched their stock portfolios moon.

Meanwhile, in the Rust Belt, factory workers were introduced to a little-known life hack called “job loss”... 

Which, of course…

Paired with FDA-approved OxyContin, proved quite effective at reducing life expectancy.

And the system worked. For some.

For a while.

How it Worked

The US bought cheap goods from China, paid them in dollars, and China recycled them into US Treasuries.

This was a mutually beneficial arrangement.

America got to finance its increasingly extravagant debt, and China got to keep selling stuff at competitive prices.

Then 2008 happened.

And by “happened,” I mean the financial system belly-flopped off the high dive and left an imprint so deep archaeologists are still trying to carbon-date it.

The Federal Reserve, realizing that the economy was now a smoldering wreckage of bad mortgages and confused investment bankers, did the thing.

You know… the thing.

The only thing it knew how to do: print money.

Lots of it. Trillions of it.

Enough to bail out Wall Street, keep bankers in their bonuses, and make China say…

“Hmmm… You know what? Maybe holding this much US debt isn’t the best idea.”

China, now fully aware that the Fed could just print its way out of a crisis, decided to do something radical: stop buying as much US debt.

Instead, they launched the Belt and Road Initiative. Which is basically Monopoly but with actual infrastructure.

Recall, their holdings of US Treasuries peaked in 2011. 

Ever since, they’ve been quietly backing away like a guy who just realized he’s in a Ponzi scheme.

Now America had a problem.

A big one.

Because the thing about a country that spends money like a teenager with their parents’ credit card is that it needs someone to keep footing the bill.

And with China pulling back, the US needs a new fish at the poker table.

Enter: The New Plan.

The new plan, first publicly floated by Paul Ryan in 2024 (yes, that Paul Ryan) is simple...

Get the world to finance America’s debt through the magic of stablecoins.

Stablecoins are like the diet soda of crypto: all the branding of the real thing but without the decentralization.

Specifically, USDT (Tether) and USDC (Circle), which are backed by—you guessed it—US Treasuries.

The idea is simple: people in Argentina, Lebanon, and Turkey (where local currencies are unstable) need a better store of value.

But instead of giving them something that appreciates—like, say, Bitcoin—we give them stablecoins.

With tokenized Treasuries and stablecoins, the US can spread dollar-denominated assets across the globe without needing international cooperation.

And because stablecoins are backed by US Treasuries, every time someone uses USDT, they’re indirectly financing America’s debt.

It’s like getting someone to pay your mortgage without them realizing it.

Genius, right?

Today, Tether holds more US Treasuries than most countries, sitting at a cool $140 billion.

That’s more than Saudi Arabia, South Korea, and even Germany.

Best part? Tether doesn’t share any of the interest income from those Treasuries with stablecoin holders.

They just keep it.

Last year, they raked in $13 billion in profits…

Making them more profitable per employee than Apple, Goldman Sachs, or even the Mafia.

Meanwhile, Trump is talking about a Sovereign Wealth Fund, potentially backed by Bitcoin.

Standing next to him at the time? Howard Lutnick, the guy who runs Cantor Fitzgerald, a firm with a 5% stake in Tether.

In case you missed that: the guy helping to run America’s economic future is directly linked to the company holding more US Treasuries than most nations.

So what does this all mean?

Well, the US government is currently playing 4D chess with its financial system…

All because it’s trying to maintain US dollar dominance.

Trump’s team, with its oddball mix of crypto and trad finance guys, is trying to pull off an impossible balancing act:

Make stablecoins a global standard to keep the dollar strong while also embracing Bitcoin as a hedge against the collapse of fiat.

See, now the US doesn’t want to kill crypto…

It wants to dollarize it.

By backing stablecoins with Treasuries and pushing tokenization under US-friendly regulatory frameworks, the US can make sure that crypto remains dollar-centric.

The result?

Bitcoin stays the rebellious outsider, but everything else—from DeFi lending to global payments—becomes part of the dollar empire.

The implications? Pretty big for crypto.

More on that—and how to play tokenization—tomorrow.