The international monetary order constructed at the 1944 Bretton Woods Conference has endured as a powerful norm for decades: for roughly eighty years, states have been able to stockpile dollar-denominated bonds, companies have signed contracts, and central banks have held reserves in dollars. Yet from the mid-2010s onward, this picture has undergone a fundamental transformation. Multipolarity is now being debated not merely in terms of military power balances, but through the architecture of finance itself. De-dollarization is no longer merely a monetary policy preference; it is becoming a form of explicit geopolitical positioning.
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) Currency Composition of Official Foreign Exchange Reserves (COFER) data translates this transformation into numbers. While the dollar constituted 71% of global official reserves in 1999, this share had declined to 56% by 2026.[i] Even more striking is a picture that extends beyond reserves alone: by 2026, the dollar’s share in global trade invoicing is estimated to have fallen to the 45% threshold.[ii] Time-series analyses confirm that this rupture is structural: Caldara and Iacoviello, in their 2022 study, found that prior to 2016, geopolitical risk was not statistically significant in determining reserve composition. With the inclusion of the Chinese yuan in the Special Drawing Rights (SDR) basket and the emergence of BRICS+ payment infrastructures, this relationship has strengthened considerably. The conclusion to be drawn is that central banks are now managing their reserve portfolios in a manner sensitive to geopolitical signals.
The most striking stress test of this picture comes from the Strait of Hormuz. Following February 2026, the US/Israel-Iran conflict and the diplomacy surrounding the reopening of the Strait demonstrated that payment system security and physical transit security in energy trade are inseparable. The US counter-blockade announcement of 13 April 2026 targeting vessels bound for Iranian ports, and the UK-France-led safe passage and marine insurance initiatives, reveal that the dollar system still provides crisis-time liquidity and insurance infrastructure, while simultaneously showing that sanction and access risks are increasing demand for alternative payment rails.[iii] It is therefore more accurate to speak not of a definitive rupture such as “the end of the petrodollar,” but of energy trade being drawn toward a more fragmented architecture through payment, insurance, and sanctions channels.
The institutional weight of the BRICS+ framework is growing rapidly. Through the 2024 expansion, new members including Ethiopia, Iran, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and Saudi Arabia joined the group, bringing the alliance to a position representing approximately 35 to 40% of global crude oil production.[iv] The correct reading of the payment architecture in 2026 should be interpreted not as a “completed alternative system,” but as a pursuit of multiple pilots and interoperability: the BRICS Pay and BRICS Bridge initiatives may be understood as efforts aimed at connecting local and national rails such as Pix, SPFS, and CIPS through a common clearing logic, but whose crisis-time liquidity depth has yet to be proven.[v] On the mBridge front, the verifiable BIS statement is that the project reached the minimum viable product stage in 2024 and was handed over to partner central banks in October 2024; it is therefore necessary to read mBridge not as a mature and widespread non-dollar payment infrastructure as of 2026, but as a CBDC laboratory where real transaction tests have been conducted but whose scaling and governance challenges remain ongoing.[vi]
Gold appears essentially at the center of this picture in the search for an alternative currency: according to World Gold Council data, central banks purchased a net 244 tonnes of gold in the first quarter of 2026; this figure confirms that the motivation for reserve diversification persists in an environment of high uncertainty, while not indicating that a safe-asset architecture capable of replacing the dollar on its own has emerged.[vii]
US fiscal dynamics add further momentum to this picture: US federal debt exceeded 39 trillion dollars in March 2026, while the budget deficit stands at approximately 1.9 trillion dollars.[viii] For economies seeking independent reserves, this fiscal pressure provides a compelling structural rationale.
The answer to where de-dollarization is heading may be interpreted as a rejection of both extremes. The picture as it stands suggests the dollar will continue to hold its position as the primary reserve currency in the short and medium term, owing to the depth of global markets and the unmatched safety of US Treasury assets persisting for some time yet. Nevertheless, the point of no return in the sense of “geopolitical risk becoming determinant of reserve composition” has already been crossed. This process is advancing not in the form of one currency replacing another, but as a multi-currency fragmentation in which the dollar’s weight is being distributed across instruments such as the euro, gold, the renminbi, and BRICS Pay. The fundamental coordination problem of the international monetary system can no longer be deferred; the question that has moved to the center of the agenda is not how far dollar hegemony endures, but by whose rules and with what guarantees the new system will operate.
[i] IMF COFER database, 2026, https://data.imf.org/en/Data-Explorer?datasetUrn=IMF.STA:COFER(7.0.1)
[ii] Boz, E., Casas, C., Georgiadis, G., Gopinath, G., Le Mezo, H., Mehl, A. & Nguyen, T. (2022). Patterns of invoicing currency in global trade: New evidence. Journal of International Economics, 136, 103604. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jinteco.2022.103604
[iii] UK House of Commons Library, Israel/US-Iran conflict 2026: Reopening the Strait of Hormuz, CBP-10636, April 2026; U.S. Central Command, “U.S. to Blockade Ships Entering or Exiting Iranian Ports”, 12 April 2026.
[iv] BP, Statistical Review of World Energy 2024; IEA, Oil Market Report, May 2026. The combined oil production share of BRICS+ members is estimated at approximately 35–40%; the exact figure may vary depending on membership classification.
[v] BRICS 2024 Kazan Declaration; Official announcements of the Indian BRICS 2026 Presidency. BRICS Pay/Bridge claims are used solely as pilot and agenda items.
[vi] Bank for International Settlements (BIS), Project mBridge reached minimum viable product stage, June/October 2024 update. BIS states that the project was handed over to partners in October 2024. For more: https://www.bis.org/about/bisih/topics/cbdc/mcbdc_bridge.htm
[vii] World Gold Council (WGC), Gold Demand Trends Q1 2026 — Central Banks, 29 April 2026. Central bank net purchases: 244 tonnes; data through 31 March 2026. For more: https://www.gold.org/goldhub/research/gold-demand-trends/golddemand-trends-q1-2026/central-banks
[viii] US Treasury Department, 2026, The Latest Data on Federal Revenue, Spending, Deficit, and the National Debt For more: https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/americas-finance-guide/
