The euro is in a much better position to be adopted as an alternative, but its share of global reserves has been flat at around 20% for years.
https://data.imf.org/en/news/imf%20data%20brief%20march%2027
So I think we're headed to a future where no currency will dominate. This is probably also why the dollar's decline doesn't have any clear successor filling the vacuum. If anything, countries are accumulating far larger stores of gold. I expect this is also why BRICS is having difficulty creating their own trading currency. No countries can, or should, trust other ones which complicates matters greatly.
If a single country's currency is the global reserve currency, all you're finding out is whose thumb you're under.
So for instance yeah the US only has about 1PE (Peak Elon) of gold, but the entire global level of US reserves are only about 5PE!
Even the gradual decline in the dollar dominance is causing significant issues with exporting inflation, amongst other things we used to be able to take for granted. It's also the reason that long-term interest rates on government debt are now hovering around 5%. As demand for the dollar declines, the interest the government needs to offer to make US debt enticing grows. When paired with deficit spending you get a vicious cycle: you need more money because you're getting drowned in debt, but you now pay more for that money which means you need even more money.
So for instance you know the US budget, right? Those thousands of pages Congress agrees to spend each year? Education, military, infrastructure, and all of those things we typically associate with government spending? That's only discretionary spending. Lots of other things, like interest on the debt, is considered mandatory and spent automatically. We're now reaching the point where interest payments will soon be costing us more than the entire discretionary budget. And that's in the current situation where the USD still has quite high demand. You just hand-waving away everything that sustains that demand would cause a catastrophic and rapid collapse in the US economy.
That's a misleading statement. First of all at the beginning of the 20th century the British pound was clearly the global currency - where a lot of the international commerce happened. Then towards the 1930s and later on the Dollar took over that role. But that role carried much less weight back then - globalization was still in its infancy and a "global reserve currency" as we understand it today simply didn't exist back then. Right now some Dutch pensioners money is invested in American, Canadian, Australian, German, etc. companies. And the parts for most consumer goods are coming from all over the world. Pre Bretton Woods basically none of this existed. This global financial system we speak of today is unprecedented and only exists since the late 70s - where most countries abandoned their currency controls (apart from the US and CH which never really had them).
There is excellent research in "currency diversity", start with Prof B. Lietaer
One piece of good news is what the Norwegians are continuing to do with the Norwegian sovereign fund thinking ahead… one country took the resources from the north sea, and came up with a plan the other across the north sea squandered everything.
https://tradersunion.com/news/editors-picks/show/2984751-nor... Norwegian sovereign fun post 184 billion dollar profit
Did you read the article? It seems that may be changing.
In any case, moving from USD -> Yuan would pose the same risk as people may perceive with USD today.
Having a single currency controlled by one nation is too risky.
Chinese currency policy is broadly about controlling their domestic population not about foreign policy. Between keeping their domestic manufacturing industry going and keeping their more affluent populations power in check you’ll find most of the motivation for what they do on currency policy.
This move gives one less reason to allow a currency transaction and thus one less way for domestic manufacturers (and importantly their management) to get around those capital controls.
As European Chinese business increased that became more important and Duetche is dominant in fx, being able to handle effectively everything now means European businesses won’t complain either.
Maintaining control over capital flight from china, for example.
The Euro is only 25 years old: it would be pure folly to make the "reserve currency" something that recent.
Then... One country of the eurozone already partially defaulted on its public debt (Greece, in 2015). And France is running an insane deficit: so bad that there are now talks of the International Monetary Fund taking control of France's public finances. France had to raise the yield on its debt to its highest level since nearly 20 years. France cannot reach the "only 5% of GDP" in yearly public deficit, on top of an already insane public debt: it is snowballing and the only outcomes are going to be miserable for the people (and for the EUR).
An economist, before the EUR began circulating, explained by which mechanisms the EUR would lead to Spain, Greece and then France default on their public debts. That economist explained how the EUR would lead to "too many secondary houses in Spain" and "too many public servants in France". When Greece did default on its debt, that economist said: "I was only wrong on the order on which these countries would default".
One would be crazy to make a reserve currency a currency that's a mix up of countries that have different productivity and different fiscal laws.
The EUR is one of the worst currency ever conceived and it could turn out to also be one of the shortest lived currency.
The part relating to France is the usual small-state BS that has thoroughly corrupted modern "economics". France's problem more is its power generation, they rely on nuclear power, a lot of their fleet is noticeably aged and desperately needs replacement, but such replacement is incredibly expensive. On top of that, French military expenditure is ridiculous, they still dream of being an empire, maintain nuclear weapons and aircraft carriers, that make sharing vessels or aircraft with other European countries a pain - as evidenced by FCAS collapsing, the French wanted to use us Germans as paypigs for their pet project suited to carrier deployments.
Amazing what you can do when you’re not policing all over the place of course it doesn’t hurt when other countries want to sub out work too.
https://www.neimagazine.com/news/china-refuels-thorium-react...
https://china-environment-news.net/2025/06/01/world-first-ch...
The spread between France OAT and German Bunds is less than 100bps.
The French annual budget deficit is lower than the projected US one.
No, and with absolute certainty not because of the second houses or public servants. That's armchair economy talk from someone that got one predictable thing right once.
Look at Michael Burry (the 2008 bubbly guy, whatever his name is). He keeps screaming "bubble" every once in a while, never got anything right again.
Let go.