Excessive money printing by Western nations to stabilize boom cycles has weakened buying power and increased concerns about currency depreciation.
The global monetary landscape is experiencing a gradual but significant change. As BRICS nations currently account for over half of global gold production and a sizable portion of official gold reserves, this development has important implications for the US dollar's long-term supremacy in the global economy.
What we are seeing is not a dramatic rejection of the dollar, but rather a gradual reduction in over-reliance on it. Confidence in fiat currencies, notably the US dollar, has decreased over time as a result of sustained monetary expansion since the gold standard was abandoned in 1971. Excessive money printing by Western nations to stabilize boom cycles has weakened buying power and increased concerns about currency depreciation. In reaction, central banks are reallocating reserves to hard assets, with gold emerging as the favored hedge against monetary and geopolitical risk.
The change has intensified since 2022, when Western sanctions resulted in the freezing of Russia's dollar-denominated reserves. That episode fundamentally altered how emerging economies perceive the safety of reserves. Since then, the BRICS bloc has been actively strengthening its push towards a multipolar monetary system, reducing dependence on the dollar and US Treasuries while expanding gold holdings and local-currency trade settlements.
Gold's attractiveness stems from its impartiality. It is not bound by the policy of any single government, cannot be sanctioned, and provides long-term protection against inflation, currency depreciation, and financial fragmentation.
While the United States continues to have the world's greatest declared gold reserves, the BRICS nations currently have more than 6,000 tons. Russia and China alone have more than 2,000 tonnes each, while India's reserves exceed 800 tonnes. China and Russia are among the world's major gold miners, giving the bloc greater control over the physical supply chain.
This control over production and reserves considerably increases BRICS strategic leverage. It enables member countries to move away from dollar-centric systems and lays the framework for alternate settlement procedures. China, for example, has gradually reduced its exposure to US Treasuries while expanding its gold reserves, indicating a conscious effort to reduce its reliance on US monetary policy and financial volatility.
Simultaneously, trade settlement in local currencies is growing across the BRICS and Eurasian countries, limiting the dollar's significance in cross-border trade. Experiments with digital and asset-backed settlement mechanisms highlight a larger goal: to create an alternative financial infrastructure that is less susceptible to Western sanctions and policy influence.
De-dollarization: A bid to rebalance
Importantly, this change does not signal the end of the US dollar. Dollar supremacy will take years, if not decades, to be seriously diluted. De-dollarisation should be understood as a balance, not a rejection: a transition from a single-currency system to a multi-currency, multi-reserve framework. In this emergent system, gold serves as a central anchor.
De-dollarisation is really anti-monopoly rather than anti-dollar. The BRICS' expanding dominance in global gold output and reserves gives a strong indication that hard assets are once again being treated as money, rather than commodities. As faith in paper currencies declines and geopolitical threats rise, gold is repositioned as a strategic monetary asset.
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