I stared at this news three times to confirm it wasn't fake news.
China has started to buy Iranian oil directly with the yuan.
You savor it, you savor it carefully—petrodollars, the core lifeline of American hegemony, has been torn open.
To put it harshly, for the past few decades, whoever dared to touch the petrodollar, the U.S. would dare to touch them. Saddam tried, Gaddafi tried, and everyone saw what happened. But now China has taken action, buying Iranian oil with the yuan, and it’s happening at a tense moment in the Strait of Hormuz.
This timing is too harsh.
Let me break down the logic behind this:
Iran is sanctioned by the U.S., cannot sell oil, cannot receive dollars, and its economy is about to be strangled. China wants to buy oil, but the U.S. won't allow dollar settlements. What to do?
Simple—just don't use the dollar.
China buys Iranian oil with yuan, Iran receives yuan and can then buy goods, technology, and infrastructure from China. Once this closed loop is established, the dollar can be completely bypassed.
What does this mean for the U.S.?
The core logic of the petrodollar system is: the whole world must use dollars to buy oil, so countries must hoard dollars for the dollar to function as the world currency. Now China and Iran have directly skipped this step; if other oil-producing countries follow suit...
Russia has already started settling in local currency with China. Saudi Arabia is also considering yuan pricing. Those Middle Eastern countries sanctioned by the U.S. are watching.
This is not a small matter; this is cutting off the fuel at its source.
What's more critical is the timing. Over in the Strait of Hormuz, Trump just issued a 48-hour ultimatum; Iran refused, and oil prices soared to 105 dollars. Meanwhile, China directly proposed a yuan settlement plan—if you block yours, I'll trade mine; if the dollar won't let me use it, I'll use my own money.
I checked the data; although the scale of yuan settlements is still less than that of the dollar, the trend is already rising. BRICS countries are promoting their own payment systems, Middle Eastern countries are looking east, and the dollar's share of global foreign exchange reserves has dropped from over 70% in 2000 to now less than 60%.
Slow, but irreversible.
Some may ask, what does this have to do with cryptocurrency trading?
The stakes are high. A loosening of dollar hegemony means that the logic of global asset pricing will change. Gold, Bitcoin, and commodities will all be repriced. Geopolitical conflicts + changes in the monetary system + inflationary pressures, these three lines twisted together will lead to market fluctuations that you can't even imagine.
To be honest, I used to think that the internationalization of the yuan was a slow and meticulous process, taking ten to twenty years. But today’s news made me realize—it's happening much faster than I thought.
When the world's largest oil importer and the most sanctioned oil-producing country hold hands and bypass the dollar, this signal is clear enough.
The next question is: who is next?