De-dollarisation: the narrative versus the numbers

The term “de-dollarisation” has settled into macro commentary as a self-evident fact. Set against the primary data, it nonetheless describes reality badly: the dollar’s share erodes slowly, mostly through FX effects, no rival currency emerges, and the only clear move is elsewhere, in gold. A quantified overview.

The word and the thing

A de-dollarisation worthy of the name would require two things simultaneously: a durable retreat of the dollar in reserves, payments, FX and invoicing, and the rise of a credible substitute. The dominant narrative takes both for granted. The official series tell a more precise, and much less spectacular, story.

Reserves: a slow erosion, and mostly an accounting one

The dollar’s share of global FX reserves stood at 56.92% in the third quarter of 2025 per the IMF’s COFER, against nearly 71% in 2000. The long-term decline is real: about fourteen points in twenty-five years. But its quarterly reading invites confusion. The IMF showed that nearly 92% of the decline recorded in the second quarter of 2025 was due to FX effects, not to dollar sales: since reserves are valued in dollars, an appreciating euro mechanically swells the euro’s share and reduces the greenback’s, without any central bank having moved. At constant exchange rates, the dollar’s share had barely fallen. The CEPR went the same way in May 2026: the aggregate often reflects the concentration of large holders and valuation, more than arbitrages against the dollar, whose determinants remain classic, trade exposure and external-debt composition.

The yuan is not taking over

For there to be de-dollarisation, there would need to be a successor. Yet the currency designated by default, the yuan, does not play that role. Its share of reserves reached 1.93% in the third quarter of 2025, down from 1.99% the previous quarter. In international payments, it weighed 2.73% globally in December 2025 and 2.13% excluding the euro zone, in sixth place, SWIFT itself noting that the Chinese currency “is losing ground”. Above all, when the dollar cedes share in payments, it is the euro that recovers most of it, about 60% per SWIFT, followed by the pound, the yen and the Swiss franc. The yuan is not the beneficiary of the move. Diversification goes toward a basket of secondary currencies, COFER’s “other currencies” item, which rose to 20.82%, aggregating the Australian dollar, Canadian dollar, Swiss franc, won or Nordic crowns.

The plumbing stays in dollars

Beyond reserves, the system’s infrastructure remains dollarised. The greenback handled about 59% of cross-border payments excluding the euro zone at the end of 2025, far ahead of any other currency, with a modest pullback on the order of 1.8 points in two years. On the FX market, the dollar featured on one side of nearly 88% of transactions per the BIS’s latest triennial survey, and it remains the dominant invoicing currency of trade and commodities. None of these compartments shows a shift.

What really moves: gold

The only clear move is elsewhere. Central banks bought more than 1,000 tonnes of gold a year in 2022, 2023 and 2024, with a record of 1,082 tonnes in 2022, a level unseen since 1950, about double the pace of the 2010-2021 decade. The year 2025, at 863 tonnes, marks a slowdown linked to record prices, but stays well above the historical average, with twenty-three buying countries in the first half. Under the combined effect of purchases and the metal’s surge, gold represented about 17% of global reserves at the end of 2024 and approached a quarter at the end of 2025. The drivers are documented: the freeze of about $300 billion of Russian assets in 2022 acted as a signal, and the work of Arslanalp, Eichengreen and Simpson-Bell establishes a link between sanctions exposure and a rise in the gold share. Repatriation follows the same logic: 68% of central banks now store the bulk of their gold on their own soil, against about half in 2020. Poland illustrates the trend, with 550 tonnes representing nearly 28% of its reserves, and a target raised to 30%.

Diversification, not substitution

Put end to end, the data draw a diversification at the margin, toward gold and a basket of secondary currencies, driven by sanctions risk and by valuation, not the coordinated abandonment of the dollar nor the advent of a rival. The greenback’s dominance crumbles at the edges, slowly, without being replaced. “De-dollarisation” over-uses a word for a narrower phenomenon: a hedge, not a rupture. The day the yuan, or any other candidate, durably crosses the threshold of payments and reserves, the term will become accurate. The 2026 figures are not there.

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Primary sources: IMF, COFER (Q3 2025) and blog “Dollar’s Share of Reserves Held Steady When Adjusted for FX Moves” (October 2025); CEPR, “The dollar’s status through the lens of foreign exchange reserves” (May 2026); SWIFT, Global Currency Tracker (January 2026); BIS, Triennial Central Bank Survey (2022); World Gold Council, Gold Demand Trends; Brookings, “How important are central bank holdings of gold?” (February 2026); Arslanalp, Eichengreen and Simpson-Bell.