Liz Truss Says Bitcoin Is the Answer to Britain's Broken Money
Liz Truss used the launch of CPAC UK to voice her support for Bitcoin, pointing to sterling debasement, leveraged pension fragilities, and growing state control as evidence that Britain's monetary system has failed.
Quick Insights
- Truss called the absence of monetary debate in government and academia "quite sinister," saying monetary policy has become a taboo subject in Whitehall.
- She first raised Bitcoin at the Treasury around 2017 to "shake things up," and says the UK's economic decline has only deepened her interest since.
- Truss framed the 2022 mini-budget crisis as exposing pre-existing fragilities in leveraged pension strategies, not as evidence that her policies were wrong.
Liz Truss, the UK's shortest-serving prime minister, used the launch of CPAC UK on 18 April to voice her support for Bitcoin, pointing to sterling debasement and decades of monetary policy failure as the backdrop for her interest in the asset.
Speaking to CoinDesk, Truss said the UK's economic stagnation runs deeper than any single government's failures. She blamed the slow erosion of sterling's value on inflation and sustained money printing, and argued the problem had accumulated quietly across successive administrations, each of which treated monetary policy as someone else's responsibility.
"A lot of the problems we have are due to debasement of our currency and lack of sound money."
Truss said the absence of serious debate about money inside government and academia had become "quite sinister," and described monetary policy as effectively a taboo subject in Whitehall. She first raised Bitcoin's hard money properties at the Treasury around 2017, she said, specifically to start a conversation. Nobody bit. Her interest has sharpened since.
Truss Says the UK Economy Is on a "Very Negative Trajectory"
The monetary argument feeds into a wider picture she painted of a country running out of road. Rising taxes, regulatory weight, and high energy costs have, in her view, broken the basic incentive to build a business. When the risks stack up faster than the rewards, entrepreneurs stop taking them. Growth stalls. The state fills the gap.
She also returned to the 2022 mini-budget, co-authored with former Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng, which sent gilt yields spiking and ended her premiership after 45 days. Her read on it has not changed. The mini-budget did not cause the crisis, she argued. It exposed a fragility that was already there: leveraged liability-driven investment strategies inside pension funds, quietly loaded up on borrowed positions that few in government or the press had properly understood.
Bitcoin fits into her argument as the hard alternative to a system she thinks is moving in the wrong direction. More centralised control, more state reach into financial life, less room for individuals to hold wealth outside the system. A fixed-supply, decentralised asset is, in that framing, a structural counter.
The timing is worth noting. Bitcoin is trading around $75,000, well off its October 2025 all-time high near $126,000, and funding rates have turned negative, a signal contrarian traders sometimes treat as a market bottom indicator. Whether a Truss endorsement moves the needle is a different question. But a former head of government reaching for Bitcoin not as a speculative trade but as a monetary principle is a different kind of political moment than the industry is used to.
Truss is now channelling her energy into CPAC UK, a three-day conference for activists, entrepreneurs, and figures from what she called the "sovereignty and liberty" movement. Her assessment of where Britain stands was characteristically stark: "There are two choices, either we're finished or we change it."
