The BRICS Bloc’s Bold New Currency

The BRICS bloc just moved one step closer to launching the new, gold-backed settlement currency they’ve been developing—something I first warned about back in 2012.

Here’s what we now know: It will be backed 40% by gold, with the remaining 60% tied to a basket of BRICS member currencies. It will function like a stablecoin, issued on a blockchain—specifically, the Cardano network, built by one of Ethereum’s original founders.

Notably, average Joes will not use the currency in daily spending, nor can holders convert their money into the underlying assets. As designed, the new BRICS currency will serve only as a non-redeemable, basket-anchored settlement currency for use specifically in global trade.

The only problem I see: The currency will be known as the Unit—easily one of the dumbest names for a currency in the history of money, though apparently just a practical name tied it being a “unit” of accounting. Clearly, BRICS bloc financial engineers have zero creativity.

For years now, I’ve been saying this was coming.

For the same years, lots of folks scoffed and rolled their eyes and insisted no currency can compete against King Dollar.

They were wrong.

I don’t say any of this to badmouth the buck. I own a bunch of them myself. Personally, I don’t want to see the dollar’s demise come to fruition.

But I have to say what I say to prepare you, Dear Reader, for the world that’s emerging.

The way I see it, you can remain loyal and patriotic to the dollar, and ride its value down as the world moves on. Or you can remain loyal and patriotic to the dollar, but still prepare for what’s blindingly inevitable.

I choose the latter.

Let’s back up a step, though, and address one of those words I chose to use above: Inevitable.

I chose the word because the people with power over the dollar—namely Congress and the Federal Reserve—have spent years destroying the dollar’s good name.

The Fed has pushed and pulled on interest rates, and pumped and drained money from the global economy in ways that have hurt foreign nations.

The pain imposed on other nations over the last many decades has led us to this moment when those other nations are now saying “we don’t particularly care about the impact our actions have on your currency and economy.

They know that by creating a new currency backed by gold, that exists and functions outside dollar-based chokepoints, they can diminish the role of the US dollar… which diminishes some of America’s global power, since so much of American power flows from controlling the world’s most important currency.

Which brings us to Congress.

America’s political forces have wielded power in recent years by using the dollar as a bludgeon to impose Washington’s wants on the world.

Case in point: After judges at the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Israeli leaders under international law, the US—despite having no legal authority over those foreign judges—sanctioned them. The punishment wasn’t legal. It was financial. US pressure forced banks, including those overseas, to freeze the judges’ accounts, shut down their credit cards, and deny them access to basic services like Amazon and Uber. Why? Because those banks and companies rely on access to US dollars and the SWIFT system to function—and Washington controls both.

In effect, the judges were cut off from daily life. Not because of any trial, but because the U.S. government used its grip on the global financial system like a schoolyard bully shaking down anyone who doesn’t fall in line.

That is precisely why the BRICS are building the Unit.

It will exist outside the global financial infrastructure that America has built over the last 80 years. It will function on a blockchain over which the US has no control.

And you can be sure that dozens and scores of countries are willingly going to hold reserves in the Unit at some point, even if only for precautionary reasons.

Think about it… if the bully takes all your lunch money every day, would you continue to keep all your coins in your pocket? Or would you stash some of them in your backpack to protect yourself?

Again, I tell you this not to point fingers at the dollar. It’s a fine currency.

It’s just that the carnies managing the circus that has become the dollar ecosystem are drunk on power.

The rest of the world knows this.

The BRICS are addressing it.

The status quo is changing.

Change with it… or lose your money to the bully.