Also worth noting: in 2019 the average volume of the ishares government bond ETF was $81,643,000 in trades per day.

In 2023, so far, it is $229,300,000.

A nearly 300% increase in volume. Appetite for US debt is somehow growing among retail and professional traders even as the possibility of repayment, in real terms, shrinks. People on the podcasts I listen to keep asking "who's gonna buy all this debt the USA keeps issuing? Foreign governments are all selling."

I think the answer is: traders will buy it, both retail and pro, and regular people opening up money market accounts to try to beat inflation. The latter probably don't even know what they are buying. If inflation gets back up to 7% or so, people will think they are fighting it by getting 5% returns through buying ever more government debt. So I plan to tell them about bitcoin and why it's a better option. But nonetheless I don't think the USA will have trouble finding buyers for their debt in the near term.