Bitcoin Is the Hedge Against a U.S. Default Nobody Sees Coming

Jan Van Eck argues that the biggest macro risk is not a banking crisis but a fiscal one that starts in Washington, with no obvious bailout if U.S. obligations come under strain. He says VanEck’s investment process focuses on 10-year trends in government spending, monetary policy, regulation, and technology, and he is highly convinced India can become the size of Europe over the next decade because of digitization, tax reform, and regulatory simplification.

He also frames AI as a long-cycle software shift rather than a mystical intelligence story. Van Eck says VanEck is using AI internally to connect data, calendars, email, and documents, and that spending is running at about $2 million annualized. He thinks the AI trade is evolving toward measurable token demand, while the ETF business itself will increasingly be shaped by agent access to data and 24/7 market structure.

On portfolio defense, he says investors should own real assets, especially gold and bitcoin, because he expects the U.S. to inflate its way out of debt. He is skeptical that AI can solve government spending pressures and says the future of crypto ETFs is more likely to be about active management, core layer-1 blockchains, and the exchanges than a flood of new single-asset products.