Putin's Top Adviser Says the U.S. Will Use Stablecoins to Wipe Out Its Debt

Is Washington Planning to Make the World Shoulder Its Spending with Digital Dollars?

Here’s something you might have missed in the news recently.

At the recent Eastern Economic Forum in Russia, one of Vladimir Putin’s closest advisers made a claim that caught my attention.

The guy’s name is Anton Kobyakov, and his claim was blunt: the United States is preparing to use crypto and stablecoins to quietly devalue its $37 trillion debt. According to him, Washington is plotting to shift that debt into a “crypto cloud.” Once there, he argued, the government could devalue it—wiping the slate clean and leaving the rest of the world holding the bag.

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I first caught the story on Russian television, and since it’s not every day I hear something this striking about the dollar coming from a senior Russian official, I thought it was worth a closer look.

Because here’s the thing: what Kobyakov described isn’t some far-fetched conspiracy theory. It’s actually the oldest trick in the book.

Uncle Sam’s Devaluation Playbook

The fact is, America has always dealt with its debt not by defaulting, but by devaluing. The U.S. never pays back in the same dollars it borrows. Instead, it pays in dollars that buy less.

Here’s the simplest way to picture it (though it sure helps if you happen to control the world’s reserve currency). Imagine Washington borrows $100. Paying it back the “hard way” means returning the same $100 in equal value. Or it can do the easy thing: print another $100. Now there are $200 chasing the same amount of goods. Prices double. Groceries that cost $1 now cost $2. When creditors get their $100 back, it looks like they’ve been made whole—but those dollars buy half as much.

That’s the trick the U.S. government has leaned on time and again.

After World War II, for instance, the U.S. didn’t really pay down its massive war debt. It let inflation and growth shrink the burden instead. Debt stood at 119% of GDP in 1946; by 1960 it was under 60%—not because Washington repaid it, but because the dollars creditors got back were worth less, and the economy had grown around the debt.

In the 1970s, Nixon’s decision to sever the dollar from gold made the trick even easier: Washington could issue as much paper as it wanted, and the rest of the world had no choice but to accept it.

The 2020s were no different. Trillions in pandemic stimulus swelled the money supply—M2 jumped about 40% in just two years. Inflation surged to highs not seen since the early 1980s, eroding the real value of existing debt.

So when Putin’s top advisor says that the U.S. might use crypto to devalue its debt, he’s not telling us anything revolutionary. He’s describing something the U.S. has been doing for decades.

But it’s the crypto angle that makes things interesting. Here’s why.

Laying the Rails

On July 18th, President Trump signed into law something called the GENIUS Act.

On the surface, the bill provides a regulatory framework for stablecoins—digital assets typically pegged to the U.S. dollar to maintain a “stable” value.

But dig deeper, and you’ll find something more sophisticated. The GENIUS Act lays the foundation for globalizing U.S.-issued stablecoins—standardizing who can issue them, how reserves are held, and how they plug into payments, banking, and cross-border transfers.

In effect, it paves the way for a worldwide network of digital dollars. Every smartphone user, small business, and remittance worker could end up holding these tokens—without realizing they’re helping to finance U.S. government debt.

In other words, Washington has already been laying the groundwork for exactly what Kobyakov described.

And here’s the “beautiful” part (if you’re a politician): it’s all fully controllable. Restrict, freeze, or seize digital dollars? A quick compliance notice is all it takes.

That means CBDC-level control—without the CBDC baggage. A clever workaround.

Remember, in July 2025 the House passed the “CBDC Anti-Surveillance State Act,” basically saying no to a U.S. central bank digital currency (CBDC). It’s not law yet—it still has to get through the Senate and be signed—but the message was clear: a CBDC is politically toxic. Too much Fed control, too many privacy worries, and way too much political blowback.

But stablecoins? They look like a neutral, market-driven product—rolled out by private firms like Circle or Tether. On the surface, it’s just another tech innovation.

The Genius Behind GENIUS

Even now, every time someone uses USDT, USDC, or another dollar-pegged token, they’re essentially holding a digital IOU backed—at least in part—by U.S. Treasury securities. But the GENIUS Act could take this to an entirely new level, creating indirect demand for U.S. government debt without foreign governments ever needing to buy Treasuries outright.

Of course, the catch for foreign holders is obvious—you’re still holding dollars. With that 1:1 peg, any inflation in the U.S. dollar spreads to every stablecoin holder worldwide, not just Americans.

But for Washington, the key advantage over “old-school” money printing is equally clear. When the Fed prints at home, Americans feel it right away in higher prices. That’s politically risky. With stablecoins, though, a big share of that inflationary burden gets pushed onto international users who have no political recourse in Washington.

And there’s another layer.

The GENIUS Act is also a direct way to funnel more money into U.S. government paper. The Act requires every payment stablecoin to be 100% backed by “safe” assets. And what counts as a “safe reserve”? You guessed it: Treasuries.

Now, it’s true the Act only lets issuers buy the shortest-term securities, like 90-day T-bills. But that doesn’t blunt the strategy. The U.S. doesn’t need to stuff all $37 trillion into stablecoins. What it needs is steady demand at the short end of the curve—the T-bills that keep rolling over and refinancing the system. That’s the fragile spot, where cracks could trigger a crisis. By tying stablecoins to T-bills, Washington shores up that weak point. And once the system proves itself, it could easily expand into longer-term debt.

Final Thoughts

So yes, Putin’s top adviser is onto something. The U.S. is already experimenting with this idea—using dollar-pegged stablecoins to socialize the cost of devaluation and extend the dollar’s reach through private rails rather than an official CBDC.

And I think it’s only the beginning.

Keep in mind, there are people around Trump who are even more radical in their proposals. For example, Michael Saylor, the billionaire CEO of MicroStrategy—famous for amassing one of the largest corporate Bitcoin treasuries—has lately seemed to have Trump’s ear and even advised the President to “dump all the U.S. gold and buy Bitcoin.” In his own words:

Dump your gold. Sell all the U.S. gold. Buy Bitcoin. Then the trade is free because you could buy 5 million Bitcoin for the cost of the gold. You will demonetize the entire gold asset class and our enemies hold gold in their banks. So their assets would go to zero. Our assets would go to hundred trillion. And we would control the world’s reserve capital network as well as the world’s reserve currency network.

While I don’t see the U.S. government trying to sell its gold (assuming it still has what it says it has) to make a trillion-dollar Bitcoin purchase, the stablecoin scheme—letting private companies do the heavy lifting instead of launching a CBDC—looks a far more viable option. The question is: can it work?

At scale, I doubt it. The U.S. has already burned through a lot of moral capital, and many countries are far more likely to say, “We don’t want your dollars. We don’t want your stablecoins. Give us gold.” (In fact, looking at gold’s performance since the pandemic, that’s exactly what seems to be happening.)

Why? One word: trust.

In theory, every stablecoin should have a real dollar or T-bill sitting behind it. But there’s no way for an outsider—let alone a foreign government—to audit that claim with absolute certainty. Tether, Circle, and others publish reports, but you still have to trust the issuer and the auditor—and they’re mostly U.S.-based. When we’re talking about trillions, that’s a tall order.

Even if blockchain one day enables real-time auditing of reserves, it doesn’t fix the deeper problem: the U.S. can always change the rules. Remember, the government once promised dollars would always be redeemable for gold; then in 1971, Nixon tore up the deal.

There’s nothing technical stopping Washington from doing the same thing with stablecoins. And everyone knows it.

That doesn’t mean they won’t push the stablecoin scheme anyway.

Regards,

Lau Vegys