BRICS members are quietly but steadily carving out a post-dollar reality — not by toppling the greenback overnight, but by building practical alternatives that chip away at its dominance. By 2025, roughly 25% of trade between BRICS countries is settled in local currencies, a milestone that signals meaningful progress toward financial autonomy without attempting to erase the dollar’s role as the world’s primary reserve currency. How they’re doing it - Local-currency trade: Nations are increasingly settling bilateral trade in each other’s currencies. Russia and China, for example, reportedly paid 99.1% of their bilateral trade in rubles and yuan, according to Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov — a dramatic shift driven by geopolitical pressure and a desire for economic independence. - Bilateral deals: Brazil and China signed a yuan–real settlement agreement in 2023 that bypassed the dollar; Egypt later adopted similar local-currency arrangements with BRICS partners. In July 2025, Egyptian Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly confirmed BRICS members were embracing local currency settlements more broadly. - Alternative payment rails and CBDCs: The bloc is developing parallel infrastructure, including the BRICS Pay CBDC initiative. China’s Cross-Border Interbank Payment System (CIPS) also expanded rapidly — by January 2025 it counted 1,467 indirect participants across 119 countries, increasing non-dollar settlement capacity. - Experimentation with asset anchors: On October 31, 2025, researchers piloted a gold-anchored settlement “Unit” reportedly backed 40% by gold and 60% by BRICS currencies — an example of creative engineering aimed at reducing reliance on dollar-centric settlement mechanisms. Political backing and strategy Leaders frame this as pragmatic diversification rather than an all-out repudiation of the dollar. Russian President Vladimir Putin has highlighted the move toward national-currency settlements and the building of robust banking and credit links between members. Brazil’s international affairs advisor Celso Amorim similarly stressed that BRICS isn’t trying to eliminate the U.S. dollar — the U.S. economy remains central — but that an alternative system must be constructed to foster balance and resilience. What this means for global finance (and crypto) The BRICS approach is incremental: expanding local-currency corridors, linking national payment systems, piloting CBDC-based payment rails, and experimenting with asset-backed settlement units. For crypto and digital-asset observers, these developments matter because they accelerate interest in programmable money, tokenized assets (like gold), and cross-border rails that could operate outside traditional dollar networks. BRICS’ efforts won’t unseat the dollar overnight, but they’re advancing a multipolar financial architecture that could reshape payment flows and the competitive landscape for digital payments and CBDCs. Bottom line BRICS is building workarounds rather than launching an outright assault on the dollar. The bloc’s mix of bilateral currency deals, alternative payment systems, CBDC projects, and innovative settlement experiments marks one of the most consequential shifts in global payments infrastructure in decades — incrementally reducing dollar dependence while preserving stability in a highly interconnected global economy. Read more AI-generated news on: undefined/news

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