#dollar vs #bitcoin
👑 The dollar remains king: why is the “Bitcoin era” postponed until 2046?
Despite the hype around cryptocurrencies, fresh IMF data and reports for January 2026 soberly assess the chances of $BTC becoming the world’s main reserve currency. The forecast is disappointing for maximalists: there will be no real change of leader before 2046.
Here are the key conclusions of the analytical model, which is based on $13 trillion of data:
📊 Numbers vs. narratives
• USD dominance: As of Q2 2025, the dollar holds 56.32% of global foreign exchange reserves. For comparison: the euro — 20.06%, and the yuan — only 2.12%.
• Liquidity: The dollar participates in 88% of all foreign exchange transactions in the world.
• Fundamentals: The US Treasury bond market has grown to $30.3 trillion, with daily trading volume exceeding $1 trillion. Bitcoin simply does not yet have such a collateral base.
🏗️ Two different games: Asset vs Currency
Analysts divide Bitcoin’s path into two stages:
1. Reserve Asset: This is already happening. The approval of spot ETFs in 2024 and the volume of assets in them ($117 billion at the beginning of 2026) make BTC a legitimate tool for diversification.
2. Reserve Primacy: This is the status of the main unit for settlements, lending and oil/gold valuation. Here the barriers are almost insurmountable due to the inertia of the global system.
🛑 What is stopping Bitcoin?
• Competition with gold: Central banks continue to choose gold. In 2024, over 1,000 tons were purchased, and 95% of banks expect further growth in gold reserves.
• Dollar tokenization: Projects like BIS’s Project Agorá and stablecoins (Citi predicts up to $4 trillion by 2030) are digitizing the dollar, making it more convenient, but not replacing it with $BTC .
• Lack of a “lender of last resort”: There is no issuer in the BTC system that could step in during a large-scale crisis.
