Did US Treasury approve plan to phase out paper money for crypto, gold coins?

Claim:

In March 2026, the U.S. Treasury approved a plan to swap paper currency for government-issued cryptocurrency and physical gold coins embossed with U.S. President Donald Trump’s face by 2027.

Rating:

A rumor spread online in March 2026 that the U.S. Treasury Department approved a plan proposed by the administration of President Donald Trump to swap paper currency for government-issued cryptocurrency and physical gold coins embossed with Trump’s face by 2027.

The claim circulated days after the Treasury announced Trump’s signature would appear on U.S. paper currency in honor of the country’s 250th anniversary (archived).

The rumor that paper currency would be phased out entirely and replaced with cryptocurrency and gold coins gained traction across multiple platforms, including Facebook and Reddit, and some users seemed to interpret the rumor as true. Snopes readers contacted us to investigate its legitimacy.

(Reddit)

To investigate the rumor’s legitimacy, we first used search engines such as DuckDuckGo, Bing and Yahoo. If the U.S. Treasury had approved a plan to phase out paper currency entirely, journalists with reputable news outlets, such as The Associated Press or Reuters, would have widely reported on it, and those search inquiries would have uncovered such evidence. 

That was not the case. We didn’t find any credible reporting about the Treasury pushing through a plan to implement cryptocurrency and gold coins in place of paper currency.

We identified the rumor’s original source — a Hawaii-based financial website called GOBankingRates that labeled the story as satire.

GOBankingRates published the claim on April 1, 2026 (archived). It began:

The days of pulling a crumpled $20 bill out of your wallet may be numbered. The U.S. Treasury has officially greenlit a sweeping monetary overhaul that will replace all paper currency with a combination of government-issued cryptocurrency and physical gold coins by 2027.

The plan calls for a full phase-out of paper money in favor of two new official forms of payment: TrumpCoin, a blockchain-based digital currency, and a line of gold coins embossed with the president’s likeness in denominations of $5, $20, $100 and what the Treasury memo describes simply as “the big one.”

A disclaimer appeared at the end of the article that read:

APRIL FOOLS! This article is entirely satirical and was published on April 1, 2026. The U.S. Treasury has no plans to phase out paper money and all quotes and information in this piece are fictional.

Several claims throughout the story had no factual evidence, including the March 31 news conference at which Trump allegedly said, “Gold is real. Crypto is the future. Paper is, frankly, very last century.” We found no evidence Trump made the statement, particularly during his public remarks on March 31 as he signed an executive order.

We reached out to the GOBankingRates for its response to the fact that some people mistook the satirical story as real news. We will update this story if we receive a response.

Snopes debunked other misleading claims stemming from April Fools’ Day in 2026, including a claim that Trump’s likeness would be carved into to Mount Rushmore and a rumor that the Transportation Security Administration announced a “clear bag” policy that would require all carry-on luggage to be transparent.

Because the effectiveness of satire is subjective, we use “originated as satire” or “labeled satire” ratings based on creators’ description of their work. It’s your call on whether you agree.

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