Summary Chamath’s statement is essentially counterfactual: that in the years after March 2020, the U.S. could run federal deficits of $5–10 trillion per year without investors losing confidence in the dollar as the world’s primary safety asset. The U.S. never actually tested that range, and the dollar remains dominant (though somewhat eroding) as a reserve and safe‑haven currency. Because the key part of the claim is about capacity under an unobserved scenario, it cannot be cleanly judged right or wrong.

What actually happened to the deficit? Annual federal deficits since the onset of COVID were far below $5–10T:

• FY 2020: ~$3.13T deficit. (home.treasury.gov)
• FY 2021: ~$2.77T. (en.wikipedia.org)
• FY 2022: ~$1.38T. (en.wikipedia.org)
• FY 2023: ~$1.70T. (en.wikipedia.org)
• FY 2024: ~$1.83T. (bidenwhitehouse.archives.gov)
• FY 2025: ~$1.78T (Reuters). (reuters.com)

So while the U.S. ran very large deficits (around $3T at peak), it never approached the $5–10T per year range described in the quote. That means we have no direct empirical test of whether deficits at that scale would have preserved or undermined confidence in the dollar.

What happened to confidence in the dollar? On the other side of the claim, we can check whether confidence in the dollar as the primary reserve/safe asset has collapsed. Evidence shows:

• The U.S. dollar’s share of global foreign‑exchange reserves has drifted down but remains dominant—about 57–58% of allocated FX reserves in 2024–2025, more than double the euro and vastly above the renminbi. (reuters.com)
• A 2025 Federal Reserve note describes “widespread confidence in the U.S. dollar as a store of value,” with the dollar at roughly 58% of global reserves in 2024, far ahead of all competitors. (federalreserve.gov)
• IMF COFER data and related commentary likewise show the dollar still clearly top reserve currency and backbone of international banking liquidity, despite gradual diversification and rising gold holdings. (tomorrowsaffairs.com)
• U.S. Treasuries and dollar assets continue to attract large foreign inflows, and official analyses still frame the U.S. as providing the world’s principal safe asset, even as concerns about fiscal sustainability grow. (investopedia.com)

At the same time, there is visible debate and some erosion:

• Major banks and media highlight an ongoing but gradual “de‑dollarization” trend in central‑bank reserves and commodity pricing, even while emphasizing that the dollar remains dominant. (jpmorgan.com)
• Commentators increasingly warn that erratic U.S. policy, high debt, and tariffs are putting the dollar’s haven status at risk, with episodes where the dollar failed to rally or even fell during geopolitical shocks. (ft.com)

So, confidence has not “broken”—the dollar is still the primary global reserve and safety asset—but there is a gradual, noisy erosion and more open questioning of long‑run dominance.

Why this is ultimately ambiguous Chamath’s normalized prediction is about a hypothetical capacity: that the U.S. will be able to run $5–10T annual deficits without losing the dollar’s safe‑asset status. What we observed instead is:

1. The U.S. did not actually run $5–10T annual deficits—the peak was just over $3T, then deficits settled in the $1.4–1.9T range. (home.treasury.gov)

   • Because the policy scenario he posited never occurred, we do not know whether markets would tolerate sustained $5–10T shortfalls without a sharp confidence shock.

2. Under much smaller (but still huge) deficits, confidence in the dollar largely held.

   • The dollar’s reserve share stayed above ~57%, and it remained the world’s main safe asset and invoicing currency, even after record deficits around $3T during COVID. (home.treasury.gov)
   • This is consistent with his intuition that, at least in crisis, the U.S. could run very large deficits without immediate loss of dollar primacy—but it does not tell us where the tolerance limit lies.

3. There is growing—but not decisive—evidence of slow erosion in dominance.

   • The dollar’s share of reserves edges down, and more trade/commodities are invoiced in other currencies, suggesting some marginal loss of confidence or at least greater diversification. (jpmorgan.com)
   • Yet no alternative currency has displaced the dollar, and the core thesis that the U.S. provides the world’s primary safe asset is still true as of 2025.

Because:

• The crucial $5–10T deficit scenario never occurred, and
• Available data show continued, though somewhat eroding, dominance of the dollar rather than a clear loss of its role as the primary global safety asset,

we cannot definitively say his claim about what the U.S. could do under that untested scenario is either correct or incorrect.

Hence the verdict: ambiguous, not because the time horizon is too short, but because the prediction is counterfactual and not directly testable with realized fiscal and currency data.