Answer: a little piece of platinum.
Huh?
Ok, so the US is approaching the debt limit. As we discussed before, this is political craziness. The US congress approved commitments to spend money in the future (for example to pay for medical care for old people (Medicare) and poor people (Medicaid) or new tanks and planes, military salaries, or electricity for the US embassy in Ottawa. To pay for this spending the government needs to borrow money. But the congress that approved spending now does not want to approve borrowing to pay for it. That is the debt limit that will be reached in the middle of October.
What to do? More and more commentators argue that crazy requires a crazy solution. Legally, the US Mint (the institution that mints US coins) can mint a platinum coin of any denomination. Coins minted from any other metal are restricted to a face value of no more than $50.
So the crazy idea is for the Mint to take a piece of platinum and stamp $1 trillion on it. That creates seigniorage: the difference between the face value of the coin and the cost of making it. I do not know how much platinum would have to be used, but not much.
Seigniorage belongs to the US Treasury department. And so, with this maneuver, the US government bypasses the debt limit and can pay obligations already approved by the congress.
Note: this all deals with spending that has been approved by the congress. Any new spending would have to be approved separately.
BTW, the market cap of bitcoin is $0.91 trillion.
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