WASHINGTON — The Treasury Department reclassified the $40 trillion national debt as a deterrent asset on Thursday, hours after Iran’s foreign minister posted screenshots of the record figure in response to a White House threat of economic warfare[3].
A companion memo noted that the interest schedule would be translated into Farsi and delivered via registered mail to the Iranian mission at the United Nations.
The CLARITY Act, which would define cryptocurrency as a commodity and shift regulation to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, has been reframed by the White House as a financing mechanism for the “most crushing economic operation ever taken against any country,” according to a fiscal note distributed to the House[2][1]. The note projects that crypto-denominated debt instruments could be auctioned as early as the fourth quarter, with proceeds earmarked for the deterrent ledger.
The debt crossed $40 trillion for the first time on Wednesday[4]. By Friday, the Treasury had issued guidance confirming that the interest payments, now set to compound at the federal funds rate, would be forwarded to Tehran indefinitely.