It's no surprise to me to see government gold buying on an absolute tear. [1] The powers that be are well aware of the importance of having real physical goods for the sake of trading and maintaining wealth.
[1] https://financialpost.com/commodities/mining/central-banks-b...
Genuinely curious - what do you think will happen (and what would be used)?
I genuinely can't imagine most of the people in my life (be that older relatives, non-tech friends, whoever) using anything but whatever 'money' is convenient. None of them care the government might be watching, and if they were going to barter for anything they're probably already doing it ("you help me with this DIY, I'll take you for dinner").
FWIW I'm in the UK, so perhaps my perspective is skewed?
I don't know if the UK is different from much else of the developed world, but here there is a tremendous amount of off-by-book transactions in the largest industries such as farming and construction. I do not think that the disappearance of cash will remove this economy, but it will have to migrate to other assets with similar qualities.
China and Russia buying non-dollar reserve assets has nothing to do with “people…using government money.”