Letters by Burk

Letters by Burk

The Global Push to Abandon the US Dollar

What’s behind it

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Burk
Oct 25, 2025
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Photo by Kenny Eliason on Unsplash

The US dollar rules global finance.

Oil is priced in dollars. International trade happens in dollars. Central banks store dollars as reserves.

The dollar is America’s currency and it’s been the world’s currency.

But that era is now starting to crack.

Some of the world’s largest economies (China, Russia, India, Brazil, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, even France) are beginning to trade without the dollar.

They’re building new financial systems that don’t run through New York or the Federal Reserve.

Because they want to escap the risks of depending on a single country’s money, especially when that country uses its currency as a geopolitical weapon.

The De-dollarization has begun.


Why the Dollar Became King in the First Place

After World War II, the US had the strongest economy, the largest gold reserves, and the only stable financial system left standing.

At the Bretton Woods conference in 1944, the world agreed that trade will be settled in dollars from then on.

And for decades, the system worked. Until the US started using its dollar power not just economically, but politically.

Countries started asking:

  • If the US controls the dollar… doesn’t it control us?

  • Can our assets be frozen with a single signature?

  • Do we want our national reserves stored in someone else’s currency?

Those questions turned from theory to reality when the US government froze Russia’s dollar reserves in 2022. Not that this was a bad move!

But it sent a message to every other country on Earth as well. The dollar is ours. Not yours.


Why Countries Want an Alternative

Here are the biggest reasons nations are moving away from the dollar:

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