This week, investors began pushing back against U.S. president Donald Trump’s “big, beautiful” tax-cutting bill, driving yields on benchmark 30-year Treasuries to near-two decade highs of 5.1%.

Trump has been trying to drum up support for his massive tax and spending bill, which cleared a procedural hurdle in the Republican-controlled House of Representatives on Wednesday.

Last week, rating agency Moody’s sent shockwaves through markets when it stripped the U.S. of its top triple-A rating, following S&P Global Ratings in 2011 and Fitch Ratings in 2023, as consecutive administrations have failed to get a handle on spiraling U.S. debt.

“The view is that, with this bill, Trump is playing with fire with the deficit,” Francesco Pesole, FX strategist at ING, told Reuters.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates Trump’s bill will add $3.8 trillion to the U.S.’s $36 trillion in debt over the next decade, taking it to an eye-watering $40 trillion.

Last week, Charlie Garcia, the founder of wealth network R360, wrote in a piece for MarketWatch that recent well-telegraphed Fed Treasury purchases of around $45 billion amounted to “stealth easing.”

“If the Fed quietly keeps hitting the QE [quantative easing] button, bitcoin might become the investment equivalent of a midnight convenience-store burrito—volatile but satisfying,” Garcia wrote, adding that others such as pro-bitcoin financial analyst Lyn Alden have played down the significance of the Fed’s bond purchases.

Garcia’s comments were seized on by the bullish bitcoin and crypto crowd who believe it’s the beginning of “the big print” that they expect to send bitcoin, gold and other scarce assets sharply higher as Federal Reserve is forced to restart its money printer.

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“This is a ticking time bomb, swept under the rug,” Josh Mandell, who claims to be a retired Wall Street trader that previously worked at the legendary Salomon Brothers Wall Street giant, posted to X, adding, “the big print is coming.”

Mandell gained a huge following on the platform after late last year correctly predicting the bitcoin price would hit a certain level in March 2025.

Others have also pointed to bitcoin’s price performance following what some have characterised as a “weak” or “lackluster” U.S. Treasury auction as a bullish signal for bitcoin going forward.

“We firmly believe bitcoin is increasingly decoupling from its correlation to risk assets and beginning to behave more like an independent, reliable asset allocation, particularly in times of uncertainty,” Edward Carroll, head of global markets and corporate finance at MHC Digital Group, said in emailed comments, adding, “the fact that bitcoin rallied overnight despite a weak U.S. Treasury auction and poor equity performance may be an indicator of this shift.”

Carroll joins other hyper-bullish bitcoin price predictions, forecasting that the bitcoin price will hit “reach at least $160,000 by the end of 2025 and $1 million by 2030″ as bitcoin’s “fixed supply dynamic and growing demand [drive] the price higher.”