Debt, stablecoins, gold, and interest rates: how Washington can buy time without resolving its fiscal imbalance.

The United States is not on the verge of bankruptcy. It is facing something more complex: a gradual narrowing of the freedom it has had to finance its power for decades.

In August 2026, federal debt surpassed $40 trillion. The problem is not simply the number. For years, Washington lived with widening deficits without markets seriously questioning U.S. solvency. What has changed is the price investors now demand to keep financing it. After moving above 5.3% in early September, the 30-year yield stayed near that threshold even after the expanded buyback program began; on September 23 the 10-year stood at 5.11%, while the 30-year reached 5.40%. Beginning September 9, the Treasury put the expanded long-end liquidity-support buybacks into operation, and on September 10 it announced an operation of up to $6 billion in 10- to 20-year securities. The market response confirmed the instrument’s limitation: long-term yields did not decline on a sustained basis. Bessent has consequently insisted that the goal was to prevent market dysfunction, not to set the price of Treasury securities. [1]

In February, the Congressional Budget Office projected a $1.9 trillion federal deficit for fiscal year 2026. Over the first eleven months of the fiscal year, however, the deficit had already reached about $2.0 trillion, essentially in line with the same period a year earlier but roughly $82 billion higher after adjusting for calendar effects. Debt held by the public is projected at $32.1 trillion, or 101% of gross domestic product, while net interest outlays exceed $1 trillion. If current policies remain in place, the CBO projects $56 trillion in debt by 2036, equal to 120% of GDP, and $2.1 trillion in annual interest payments. [2]

Those numbers suggest an unsustainable trajectory. But applying the standard template for a sovereign-debt crisis to the United States can be misleading. Washington issues the currency in which almost all of its debt is denominated; controls the world’s largest financial market; supplies the reserve asset most widely used by the international system; manages, together with the Federal Reserve, a public and monetary balance sheet without peer; and holds the world’s largest gold reserves. Above all, the dollar remains the core infrastructure through which the world trades, saves, borrows, and builds reserves.

The American problem, then, is not simply whether the debt can be paid. It is how the United States will distribute, over time and space, the cost of continuing to pay it.

At least six avenues exist. Only two — raising revenue and structurally reducing spending — directly address the primary deficit. The others affect the cost of debt, demand for Treasuries, the maturity structure, public assets, or the currency’s real value. They can be highly effective, but above all, they buy time.

Not everything that finances the deficit reduces the deficit

The first distinction is also the one most easily lost in political debate.

A government reduces its deficit when it collects more revenue or spends less. It can do so by raising taxes, broadening the tax base, cutting discretionary spending, or reforming major mandatory programs — Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid — whose costs rise as the population ages. It can also reduce the debt burden by growing the economy faster: if the denominator, GDP, grows persistently faster than the numerator, the trajectory becomes progressively easier to manage.

Everything else is primarily about financing the deficit. That distinction is crucial.

If a stablecoin issuer buys Treasury bills, the deficit does not shrink; demand for the securities that finance it rises. If the Treasury issues more Bills and fewer Bonds, the deficit does not shrink; the cost and risk of financing shift. If the Treasury buys back less-liquid securities, the deficit does not shrink; market functioning improves. If the Federal Reserve cuts rates and the average cost of debt falls, the interest component declines over time, but the primary balance can remain negative. If the government’s gold is revalued, no new economic wealth appears; existing wealth becomes usable for accounting and financing purposes.

These are different instruments, but they belong to the same family: pushing back the moment when the federal budget forces the American political system to openly decide who must bear the adjustment.

Interest on the debt has become public policy

The cost of money has turned a problem accumulated over three decades into an immediate one.

For 2026, the CBO estimates an average interest rate of roughly 3.4% on debt held by the public. That may seem modest compared with yields on new issuance. But that is precisely where the risk lies: every low-coupon security issued during the era of near-free money must eventually mature and be refinanced at today’s rates. The average cost of debt therefore lags the marginal cost of new issuance.

A one-percentage-point reduction in the average cost of the $32.1 trillion in debt held by the public would, once it had worked through the stock via refinancing, reduce annual interest expense by roughly $321 billion. The savings would not appear immediately, because outstanding Notes and Bonds retain their coupons until maturity. Still, the scale explains why Washington is so sensitive even to seemingly modest changes in yields.

The Treasury, however, does not set the policy rate. The Federal Reserve does. At its July 28-29, 2026, meeting, the FOMC kept the federal funds rate in the 3.50 to 3.75% range, with three members favoring a 25-basis-point increase. Since August 23, the picture has hardened further. At Jackson Hole on August 28, Kevin Warsh described 2% as a “firm and fixed” inflation target, said it was difficult to characterize overall financial conditions as restrictive, and identified prices as the immediate priority. July PCE data, released August 26, still showed inflation running at 3.7% year over year and 3.3% excluding food and energy. [3]

On September 3, Christopher Waller left open the possibility of keeping rates unchanged if summer disinflation were confirmed. Still, he added that another increase would be appropriate if August data showed renewed acceleration. Subsequent data resolved the uncertainty in a more restrictive direction. In August, the CPI rose 0.4% month over month and 3.4% year over year. On September 16, the FOMC unanimously raised the federal funds rate by 25 basis points, bringing the target range to 3.75-4.00%. The new projections also put the median rate at 4.1% at the end of 2026 and judged inflation risks to be predominantly to the upside. The Treasury’s problem is therefore no longer whether the Fed will pause or deliver a first hike: the tightening has arrived, and the market must now price in the possibility of further increases. [4]

That is the first contradiction. The federal budget benefits from lower rates, while price stability may require higher ones. The more markets believe monetary policy is being subordinated to the needs of the public debtor, the higher the inflation premium they can demand on long-dated securities.

A premature cut in the federal funds rate could therefore lower short-term yields while pushing long-term yields higher. That is the threshold of fiscal dominance: the Treasury does not need to order the Federal Reserve to finance the government. It is enough for investors to believe that the sheer scale of the debt makes the rates needed to control inflation politically too expensive to sustain.

The temptation to shorten the debt

There is a second option: change what the Treasury issues. Bills mature in weeks or months; Notes in two, three, five, seven, or ten years; and Bonds in twenty or thirty years. They are not interchangeable.

When long-term yields rise above short-term yields, Washington may find it attractive to finance more of its needs at the front end of the curve. In August 2026, the Treasury expected to raise $739 billion in net marketable borrowing during the July-September quarter and another $628 billion from October through December. At the same time, it said it intended to keep issuance of the major coupon maturities broadly unchanged, using Bills to absorb much of the variation in financing needs. [5]

That is rational in the short run, but it can become dangerous over time. Issuing more short-term debt when it is temporarily cheaper reduces interest expense, but it also requires continuous refinancing. The Treasury exchanges duration risk for rollover risk.

If rates fall, the Treasury wins. If they remain high or rise further, a larger share of the debt must be refinanced at the new terms. In effect, shortening the average maturity of the debt is a bet on future monetary policy. And at this end of the curve, a new buyer is emerging.

Stablecoins as a digital Eurodollar

The GENIUS Act, enacted in July 2025, transformed stablecoins from a largely crypto-market phenomenon into a potential instrument of U.S. international monetary power.

The law requires that stablecoins be backed at least one-for-one by highly liquid assets: dollars, deposits, secured repos, and especially Treasuries with remaining maturities of no more than 93 days, either directly or through money market funds invested in the same instruments. [6]

The mechanism is straightforward. A person in Argentina, Nigeria, Turkey, or Indonesia who buys a dollar-pegged stablecoin is not merely buying a token. If the issuer invests those funds in Treasury bills, that person indirectly finances U.S. public debt.

The chain is simple: global demand for stablecoins → demand for dollars → purchases of Treasury bills → Treasury financing. The historical parallel to the Eurodollar market is hard to miss.

After World War II, the dollar became international, in part because it could be created, held, and lent outside the United States. Stablecoins add another layer. They make the dollar accessible without a U.S. bank account, transferable around the clock, and usable through a global digital infrastructure.

The Treasury has made its objective clear. Scott Bessent has described stablecoins as a tool to reinforce the dollar’s reserve-currency role and increase demand for Treasuries. In fall 2025, he estimated the market at roughly $300 billion, with the potential to grow tenfold by the end of the decade. By the end of May 2026, the market had already reached about $320 billion. [7]

The effect is already measurable. A Bank for International Settlements study, updated in June 2026, estimates that stablecoin issuers purchased nearly $35 billion in Treasury bills in 2025 alone. According to the authors, an inflow of roughly $3.5 billion into stablecoins can lower three-month bill yields by about four basis points within ten days and by nearly five basis points thereafter. However, the effect largely disappears at longer maturities. [8]

That limit is fundamental. Stablecoins can help address the demand for short-term debt, but they cannot solve the confidence problem with the 30-year Treasury.

Public de-dollarization, private re-dollarization

Geopolitically, the outcome can seem paradoxical. Central banks in several countries can reduce the dollar’s share of their reserves, buy more gold, and build alternative payment systems. At the same time, millions of households and businesses in those countries can increase their dollar exposure through stablecoins.

State-led de-dollarization can therefore coexist with the re-dollarization of societies. Stablecoins are especially attractive where the domestic currency is weak, capital controls are tight, or the banking system is not trusted. A private digital dollar can reach places where a dollar-denominated bank account cannot.

For Washington, the advantage could be extraordinary: the next global payments infrastructure could become an automatic engine for demand for U.S. public debt.

But the effect depends on where the money comes from. If $100 billion in new stablecoins comes from foreign savers who previously held no dollar assets, it creates additional demand for dollars and Treasuries. If the money comes from a U.S. money market fund that already owned T-bills, almost nothing changes. If it is withdrawn from bank deposits, the system’s credit supply can change.

The Treasury Borrowing Advisory Committee has emphasized this distinction: growth driven by genuinely new offshore demand would be positive for Treasuries; substitution out of money market funds would be largely neutral; and an outflow from bank deposits could affect both bank credit and the composition of demand for government securities. [9]

Are stablecoins inflationary?

Stablecoins are not inherently inflationary. Turning $1,000 in a bank deposit into $1,000 of stablecoins and investing the reserve in Treasuries does not create an additional $1,000 of purchasing power. It changes the balance-sheet structure through which the existing money is held. The direct monetary effect can therefore be neutral.

The second channel is more geopolitically significant. Demand for Treasuries generated by stablecoins can put marginal downward pressure on short-term yields, thereby lowering the cost of Treasury financing for the deficit. If Washington uses those savings to reduce the deficit, the effect can be neutral or disinflationary. If it treats cheaper financing as room to spend more or tax less, the added financing capacity becomes a fiscal stimulus. In that sense, a stablecoin can be inflationary not because it “creates money,” but because it loosens the political constraint the bond market imposes.

There is also the exchange-rate channel. Strong international demand for dollar stablecoins increases global demand for dollar-denominated assets. A stronger dollar lowers the dollar price of imports and therefore tends to be disinflationary in the United States.

The paradox returns. Stablecoins can be disinflationary through the exchange rate and a possible contraction in bank credit, yet inflationary through the fiscal space they provide the government. The outcome depends on how Washington uses the privilege. [10]

Buying back your own bonds does not erase the debt

Treasury buybacks also need to be understood correctly. On August 19, the Treasury Department announced that, from September 9 through November 4, the maximum size of liquidity-support buybacks in nominal Treasuries with maturities between ten and thirty years would rise from $2 billion to at least $4 billion per operation. The expanded program is now operational. On September 10, the Treasury conducted an operation of up to $6 billion in the 10- to 20-year sector, tripling the size of previous long-end operations. However, the effect on yields was modest and temporary: the market continued to demand a high premium on longer maturities. [11]

The reason is simple. The Treasury does not destroy debt by buying it back. Instead, it issues new debt to finance the retirement of older debt. The Treasury Department itself states that buybacks are not expected to materially change the net amount of marketable debt held by the public because repurchased securities are replaced through new issuance. [12]

This is an operation in liquidity and debt-structure management, not fiscal consolidation. It can still be useful. Older, less-liquid Treasuries can trade at a premium relative to on-the-run issues. Buying them back can deepen and regularize the market, reduce dislocations, improve price discovery, and indirectly lower the premium investors demand from the Treasury.

The problem arises when a technical tool is perceived as a political defense of a specific yield level. The more the Treasury intervenes to prevent long rates from rising, the more the market may question why such intervention is necessary. Liquidity can be restored. Fiscal solvency cannot be simulated indefinitely.

The gold is worth $11 billion, but its real value is more than $1 trillion

The second major balance-sheet margin is already embedded in the U.S. government’s accounts. The United States holds 261.499 million troy ounces of gold. Yet the Treasury still carries that gold at the statutory price set in 1973: $42.2222 an ounce. The official book value is only about $11.041 billion. [13] On September 4, 2026, spot gold traded at about $4,419 an ounce. At that price, the reserves had a market value of roughly $1.156 trillion. [14]

That is not a marginal difference. That is where a $6,000-per-ounce gold scenario becomes interesting. At that price, 261.499 million ounces multiplied by $6,000 would be worth about $1.569 trillion. Compared with the $11.041 billion carried on the books, the potentially monetizable accounting gain would be about $1.558 trillion. That is roughly 82% of the CBO’s projected $1.9 trillion deficit for 2026 and just under 5% of all debt held by the public.

Revaluation cannot be a simple bookkeeping entry

However, the Treasury cannot simply decide tomorrow morning to replace “$42.2222” with “$6,000.” Section 5117 of Title 31 of the United States Code provides that gold certificates issued against Treasury gold cannot exceed the value of $42 and two-ninths dollars per ounce. A material increase in the monetizable value of the reserves would therefore require legislation.

Once the statutory price is changed, however, the accounting mechanism is already in place. The Federal Reserve’s accounting manual states that when the Treasury monetizes gold, it receives a credit to its account at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York in exchange for gold certificates. It also specifies that when the official gold price changes, the Gold Certificate Account and the Treasury’s deposit are adjusted simultaneously. [15]

If Congress raised the official price to $6,000 an ounce, the additional credit could be on the order of $1.558 trillion. Fort Knox would not have to be sold. The gold would remain physically in the reserves. What would be monetized is the revaluation.

Creating fiscal space without issuing Treasuries

This is where the issue shifts from accounting to monetary policy. The Treasury could use the new balance to reduce new issuance, retire debt, or finance spending. These three outcomes are markedly different.

If the $1.558 trillion were used to retire debt and paired with a credible consolidation plan, the revaluation could improve the supply-demand balance in the Treasury market, reduce interest costs, and strengthen perceptions of the sovereign balance sheet.

There are international precedents. A 2025 Federal Reserve study notes that South Africa used part of the valuation gains on its reserves to reduce borrowing needs and slow the growth of debt-service costs. But the case also shows the limits of the strategy: reserve revaluation can temporarily improve a balance sheet; it does not correct a structural gap between revenue and expenditure. [16]

If Washington instead used the revaluation to finance a deficit of almost $2 trillion without issuing an equivalent amount of Treasuries, the interpretation would change radically. The Treasury would be spending a balance created by monetizing an asset it already owns. As those dollars entered the economy, the Treasury General Account balance would fall, and bank reserves at the Fed would rise.

Economically, that would not be identical to quantitative easing. But the distinction could become thin in the market’s eyes. The government would be financing spending without raising taxes or issuing a corresponding amount of new debt to investors.

When gold becomes inflationary

Gold revaluation is not inherently inflationary. If the Treasury changes an asset value on its balance sheet and does not use the resulting credit, aggregate demand does not rise. If it uses the credit to retire debt, the effect could remain relatively contained and might even reduce some yield premiums.

If, on the other hand, it uses $1.5 trillion to finance new spending that would otherwise have required Treasury issuance, the mechanism could be expansionary.

The greater risk, however, would not necessarily be the quantity of bank reserves created. It would be the precedent. Markets could conclude that the United States had begun using its monetary assets to avoid fiscal adjustment.

At that point, the relevant price would not be gold alone. Investors would watch the dollar, the 30-year Treasury, and inflation expectations at the same time. Monetization perceived as a one-off can be absorbed. Monetization perceived as a model can change the premium required to hold U.S. liabilities.

Inflating away the debt

Finally, there is the oldest solution of all: not repaying fewer dollars, but making the dollars repaid worth less. Inflation raises nominal GDP and erodes the real value of outstanding fixed-rate debt. If wages, prices, and tax revenues rise while the coupon on a 10-year Treasury remains unchanged, the real burden of that security declines.

It is a form of taxation on creditors. But it works only when inflation is unexpected. Once inflation becomes expected, investors demand higher nominal yields. Bills reprice almost immediately as they are rolled over; new Notes incorporate expected inflation; and TIPS are explicitly protected against changes in the price level.

The more the Treasury shortens maturities to save money now, the less effective future inflation becomes as a tool for eroding the debt, because financing costs adjust more quickly.

Financial repression can reinforce this mechanism through bank regulations that favor Treasury holdings, prudential requirements, central bank purchases, tax incentives, and reserve requirements that channel a share of stablecoin issuers’ assets into U.S. Treasuries.

But this strategy has limits. The dollar’s privilege depends on the belief that holding dollars and dollar assets remains preferable to alternatives. It cannot rest on coercion alone.

Stablecoins and gold are two sides of the same strategy

Taken together, stablecoins and gold are more than two financial instruments. They sit on opposite sides of the U.S. sovereign balance sheet.

Stablecoins operate on the liability side: they indirectly expand the global pool of holders of U.S. public debt. Gold revaluation operates on the asset side: it makes the Treasury’s existing stock of wealth financially mobilizable, even though its book value still reflects a monetary convention from the Bretton Woods era. One creates demand. The other creates balance-sheet capacity.

Between them, debt management includes: more Bills to capture new stablecoin demand; buybacks to improve liquidity in Bonds; an average maturity calibrated to interest-rate expectations; and, potentially, gold monetization to reduce the volume of new issuance required.

It is not hard to imagine a coherent strategy: expand dollar stablecoins globally and turn them into structural buyers of Treasury bills; use buybacks to support liquidity at the long end; calibrate average maturity; preserve gold revaluation as an extraordinary reserve; and ultimately bet on the productivity of artificial intelligence, energy, and new industrial capacity. As of September 23, one link in that sequence has become even less linear: the Fed has already raised rates, and the FOMC projections reflect a more restrictive policy stance through year-end. Shortening the debt too aggressively therefore increases exposure to rollover risk precisely when the cost of money may remain elevated longer than expected. That is a possible strategy. It is not yet a fiscal repair plan.

Growth remains the decisive factor

Among all available instruments, only one can theoretically avoid an explicit redistribution among taxpayers, state beneficiaries, and creditors: sufficiently strong real growth.

Debt dynamics depend on the relationship between the average financing cost and nominal economic growth, as well as on the primary balance. If the United States could sustain a productivity surge driven by artificial intelligence and technology investment, the debt-to-GDP ratio could become far more manageable even without an immediate return to primary balance.

That is also why U.S. debt cannot be analyzed in isolation from the technological competition with China. The AI race is not only about military superiority, industry, and innovation. Indirectly, it is also about the fiscal sustainability of American power. Three percent real growth has very different fiscal consequences than 1.5% growth.

But this path contains its own contradiction. The hyperscalers that build data centers, power grids, and AI infrastructure are themselves enormous consumers of capital. The Treasury therefore has to compete with those very companies for global savings, even as it depends on them to expand future productive capacity.

A further paradox follows: stronger growth can improve the denominator of the debt-to-GDP ratio while, at the same time, keeping the equilibrium interest rate and the cost of capital higher. On September 3, Waller made the point more explicit: in his view, the traditional safety premium on Treasuries has largely disappeared, helping push the neutral rate higher, while deficits on the order of 6% of GDP still require structural correction. Growth remains decisive, but it is not an escape from fiscal consolidation. [17]

The more capital the government absorbs to finance current spending and interest payments, the greater the potential crowding out of investment that should generate the growth needed to make the debt sustainable.

An American default would probably not look like a default

That is why simply talking about “default” frames the problem incorrectly. The United States can technically default, especially in a political crisis over the debt ceiling. But the probability of conventional economic insolvency is very different from that of a state that borrows in a currency it does not control.

Washington has a set of fiscal tools available to few other states: it can raise revenue or cut spending, alter the composition of issuance, support liquidity through buybacks, steer new demand toward Treasuries, extend the dollar through stablecoins, revalue gold, tolerate some erosion of the debt’s real value, and rely on growth. It can also benefit from lower interest rates if disinflation permits. But Warsh has made clear that short-term interest rates should remain the Fed’s primary tool and that unconventional policies should be reserved chiefly for genuine crises. That stance also implies an institutional limit: the central bank’s balance sheet cannot be treated as an ordinary extension of the Treasury.

That makes nominal default less likely. It does not make the debt free. Instead, it shifts the issue to how losses are distributed.

Taxpayers can pay through higher taxes. State beneficiaries can pay through reduced benefits. Creditors can pay through inflation or negative real interest rates. Consumers can pay through higher prices. Banks can pay through regulation that pushes them toward sovereign debt. Foreign savers can pay through dollar depreciation. Future taxpayers can pay through new debt.

The distinctive capacity of the American system lies precisely in its ability to choose — or to combine — who bears those costs.

The imperial privilege is the authority to postpone the decision

This is where the fiscal issue becomes geopolitical again. The United States is not unique in its ability to accumulate debt without limit. No system has that privilege. Its uniqueness lies in the fact that monetary and financial centrality allow Washington to push the point at which the constraint becomes coercive farther than others.

Stablecoins could extend dollar hegemony by converting the global digitization of payments into demand for U.S. liabilities. Gold revaluation could unlock more than $1 trillion in financing capacity currently immobilized by a half-century-old accounting convention. A future decline in rates would ease interest expense, but after the September 16 increase, it is no longer the central near-term scenario. Buybacks and maturity management can reduce liquidity premiums and the marginal cost of debt; growth can expand the denominator; inflation can erode the numerator in real terms.

None of these instruments, separately or together, eliminates a structural primary deficit. In fact, the risk may be exactly the opposite. The greater Washington’s ability to find new buyers, new balance-sheet resources, new forms of monetization, and new room for financial management, the weaker the political urgency to correct the underlying imbalance. America’s monetary privilege can therefore become the mechanism that perpetuates the problem.

That is the final paradox. Stablecoins can make the dollar more indispensable even as the debt they help finance becomes harder to sustain. Gold can soar precisely because investors fear the gradual erosion of fiat currencies, and that same rise can give the Treasury new room to monetize its assets. Inflation can reduce the real value of the debt, but if it becomes systemic, it can destroy the confidence premium that allows the United States to borrow on privileged terms.

The dollar can therefore become more widespread while becoming less stable as a measure of value. That would not necessarily signal the end of American hegemony. It could mark a new phase.

The real risk for Washington is not that one day the Treasury opens its cash drawer and finds it lacks the dollars to pay its creditors. Dollars can be created; assets can be revalued; and regulation and financial innovation can generate new buyers.

The decisive threshold will arrive when the world begins to demand an ever-higher price to keep absorbing those dollars. At that point, the problem will no longer be accounting. It will be political.

The United States will have to choose between defending the currency’s value and the nominal value of the state’s accumulated promises. Until then, it still possesses something no other major debtor has to the same degree: time. And time, perhaps even more than the dollar itself, is the contemporary form of America’s imperial privilege.

Time, however, does not necessarily come free. The time gained through this privilege may carry a rising marginal cost. The more the United States comes to rely on new buyers, inflation, shorter maturities, or financial repression, the greater the premium the market may demand at the long end of the yield curve.

Notes

[1] U.S. Department of the Treasury, “Daily Treasury Par Yield Curve Rates”, August 28-September 4, 2026; U.S. Department of the Treasury, “Treasury Announces Increased Sizes of Nominal Long-End Liquidity Support Buybacks Beginning September 9”, August 19, 2026; Reuters, “Bessent pushes back on fears over US debt market strains”, August 31, 2026; U.S. Department of the Treasury, “Daily Treasury Par Yield Curve Rates”, September 23, 2026; Reuters, “US Treasury to buy up to $6 billion in Sept 10 buyback operation”, September 9, 2026; Reuters, “Edgy bond investors unconsoled by Bessent’s big buyback”, September 10, 2026.

[2] Congressional Budget Office, “The Budget and Economic Outlook: 2026 to 2036”, February 2026; Congressional Budget Office, “Monthly Budget Review: July 2026”, August 10, 2026; Congressional Budget Office, “Monthly Budget Review: August 2026”, September 9, 2026.

[3] Federal Reserve, “Minutes of the Federal Open Market Committee”, July 28-29, 2026; K. Warsh, “In Our Time”, August 28, 2026; U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, “Personal Income and Outlays, July 2026”, August 26, 2026.

[4] C. J. Waller, “The Economic Outlook and Some Comments on My Policy Communication”, September 3, 2026; U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, “Consumer Price Index – August 2026”, September 11, 2026; Federal Reserve, “Federal Reserve issues FOMC statement”, September 16, 2026; Federal Reserve, “Summary of Economic Projections”, September 16, 2026.

[5] U.S. Department of the Treasury, “Treasury Announces Marketable Borrowing Estimates”, August 3, 2026; “Quarterly Refunding Statement”, August 5, 2026.

[6] Treasury Borrowing Advisory Committee, “GENIUS Act”, August 2025.

[7] U.S. Department of the Treasury, “Statements by S. Bessent on the GENIUS Act and the stablecoin market”; BIS, May 2026 data.

[8] R. Ahmed, I. Aldasoro, “Stablecoins and safe asset prices”, BIS Working Papers, no. 1270, June 2026 version.

[9] Treasury Borrowing Advisory Committee, “2025 report on the relationship between stablecoins and the Treasury market”.

[10] B. Hofmann, M. Kaldorf, M. Rottner, “The macroeconomics of stablecoins”, BIS Working Papers, no. 1363, June 2026.

[11] U.S. Department of the Treasury, “Treasury Announces Increased Sizes of Nominal Long-End Liquidity…”, cit.; Reuters, “US Treasury to buy up to $6 billion in Sept 10 buyback operation”, September 9, 2026; Reuters, “Edgy bond investors unconsoled by Bessent’s big buyback”, September 10, 2026.

[12] U.S. Department of the Treasury, “Treasury Announces Marketable Borrowing Estimates”, cit.

[13] U.S. Department of the Treasury, “U.S. International Reserve Position”, July 2026.

[14] Reuters, “Gold slides after robust US payrolls boost rate hike bets”, September 4, 2026.

[15] 31 U.S.C. § 5117; Federal Reserve, Financial Accounting Manual for Federal Reserve Banks, 2026.

[16] C. Weiss, “Official Reserve Revaluations: The International Experience”, Federal Reserve, FEDS Notes, August 1, 2025.

[17] K. Warsh, “In Our Time”, cit.; Reuters, “Fed’s Waller says safety premium for Treasuries is gone, pushing neutral rate higher”, September 3, 2026.

AUTHOR’S NOTE

This article grew out of the author’s knowledge, reflections, and theoretical work. The author developed its analytical framework, argument, and conceptual vocabulary independently. Artificial intelligence tools were used exclusively to assist with linguistic and editorial revision under the author’s direct supervision.