BRICS Dumps Dollar: The Global Currency Shift Accelerates

The dollar's dominance faces its biggest challenge yet as BRICS nations execute their de-dollarization playbook.

The Great Unpegging

Central banks across Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa are systematically reducing dollar reserves—swapping greenbacks for gold and alternative currencies. Trade settlements in local currencies jumped 400% since 2022, creating parallel financial channels that bypass Western banking systems entirely.

Geopolitical Calculus

Sanctions weaponization triggered this exodus. When the US froze Russia's reserves, it handed every other nation a stark lesson in dollar dependency risks. Now BRICS trades oil in yuan, settles commodities in rupees, and builds payment infrastructure that ignores SWIFT.

Digital Currency Endgame

China's digital yuan advances while BRICS discusses a common blockchain-based settlement token. Traditional finance scrambles to respond—too little, too late, as usual. The old guard still thinks in terms of currency wars while the real battle happens in protocol layers.

When the dust settles, we'll find the dollar didn't collapse—it simply became optional. And in global finance, being optional is just the polite way of saying irrelevant.

Top 3 Reasons BRICS Wants To Ditch the US Dollar

The main and most important top 5 reasons why the BRICS alliance wants to ditch the US dollar are:

The US has been imposing sanctions on anyone it deems unfit and has targeted Iran, Iraq, and Palestine. The recent sanctions on BRICS member Russia backfired as it kick-started the global de-dollarization moment. Developing countries fear that the US can sanction anyone at any time; therefore, to protect their interest, they want to cut back on the US dollar and boost local currencies for trade.

On Thursday, TRUMP teased he would fire US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent if the Fed didn’t cut interest rates. Emerging economies have a perception that the US government is pressuring the Federal Reserve and meddling in its matters, bullying the independent entity on interest rate hikes. Also, the fallout between Trump and Fed Chair Jerome Powell was an open book for the world to see. Therefore, BRICS and other emerging economies have a perspective that the President, the US dollar, and the Federal Reserve are untrustworthy.

BRICS wants to stay away from the dollar as the US debt has crossed $38 trillion. Since the US exports the dollar to fund its deficit, holding on to the dollar-denominated assets poses a risk to its economy. Diversifying from the USD to other assets like Gold and local currencies helps them mitigate the risk. Emerging economies are worried that the US will fail to contain its debt.