The U.S. government now spends more on interest payments than it does on national defense. In the 2025 fiscal year, interest expense was $970 billion, nearly triple what it was five years ago, and it’s still climbing. For some investors, looking at those numbers leads to an inevitable conclusion that this type of fiscal dynamic ends with liberal use of the printing press — and it won’t be newspapers getting printed, but money.
That conclusion is colloquially now known as “the big print,” a theory initially popularized by investment manager Lawrence Lepard’s 2025 book of the same name. Lepard’s book posits that the government will be forced to print its way out of its fiscal mess, debasing the dollar in the process. The popular version of the theory often runs far wilder than Lepard’s nuanced case for sound money, but even a conservative reading of the fiscal data today suggests that more inflation is a reasonable starting point to plan around. And for investors looking to prepare for this possible scenario, crypto assets like Bitcoin, (BTC +1.13%) Zcash, (ZEC +7.20%) and Tether Gold (XAUT +0.74%) can offer a distinct form of protection.
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It’s normal to be concerned about inflation
The core tenet of the big print thesis is simple arithmetic.
The national debt of the U.S. has already passed $39 trillion, and the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projects budget deficits exceeding $2 trillion annually for the next decade. As more of the country’s revenue flows to servicing its existing debt, less remains for everything else. And that’s an extremely unpalatable proposition for political leaders, as cutting back on government spending programs tends to be quite unpopular.
To avoid that problem, policymakers could try to grow their way out with rapid economic expansion. They could also push for a sovereign default, which would be catastrophic and is presently politically inconceivable. Or, they could allow higher-than-normal inflation to erode the real value of the debt over time, which is the path of least resistance and the most historically common outcome for heavily indebted governments.
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Investors don’t need to accept the most extreme formulations of the big print theory — some of which claim that the U.S. will soon enter a period of print-driven hyperinflation — to act on its premise and prepare for it. Even if the U.S. avoids anything resembling hyperinflation, persistent inflation of 4% to 5% annually would compound into a serious loss of the dollar’s purchasing power within a decade.
These three assets are built for a world with too much money
One solution to the possibility of higher inflation is to allocate some of your portfolio to holding sound money, like Bitcoin, Zcash, or tokenized gold.
Bitcoin is the most established asset in crypto thanks to its capped maximum supply and its wide distribution. More than 95% of its 21 million coin supply has already been mined, with new issuance at just 450 coins per day; the next halving in April 2028 will cut that rate in half. Furthermore, consistent inflows into Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) have created a structural demand floor that supports the thesis that it’s a scarce store of value which can’t be printed by anyone.
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Zcash is appealing because it shares Bitcoin’s 21 million coin cap but adds financial privacy features that enable anonymous transactions if users opt in. Thus it’s aiming to have something similar to Bitcoin’s scarcity while also implementing features the other asset can never have, which could pay off significantly down the line if financial privacy proves to be something investors want. For investors who value both scarcity and confidentiality, Zcash complements Bitcoin as a different expression of the same hard-money idea.
Tether Gold takes a different approach entirely, but it’s still valid as a hedge against inflation. Each token represents one troy ounce of physical gold held in Swiss vaults. Tether Gold thus provides inflation protection with far less volatility than its crypto counterparts.
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The most important caveat here is that holding store-of-value assets while abandoning equities or growth-oriented investments would leave your portfolio stranded if inflation stays moderate. Think of these assets as inflation-resistant insurance within a diversified portfolio strategy, not as a replacement for diversification.
If the big print ever arrives in its milder form, you’ll be glad you prepared; if it doesn’t, a measured allocation to these assets will cost you very little.
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