De-Dollarization and the Quiet Repricing of Gold

The word de-dollarization gets thrown around loosely. In the gold market

it has a precise meaning: central banks reducing the share of their

reserves held in US dollar assets, and moving a portion of that weight

to gold. The data say the shift is real, ongoing and still incomplete.¹²

The Technical Meaning of De-Dollarization

Reserve-asset composition is one of the most conservative decisions a

central bank makes. For most of the post-Bretton Woods era, the dollar

was the default, with portfolios structured around US Treasuries, agency

debt and dollar deposits. Gold was a small, traditional sleeve, held

partly for historical reasons and partly for the optionality that comes

from a non-sovereign asset.

De-dollarization, in technical terms, does not mean abandoning the

dollar. It means reducing the concentration. The dollar's share of

global foreign-exchange reserves has declined gradually for two decades,

from roughly 72 percent in 2000 to below 60 percent in recent years.¹

The marginal weight has moved partly into non-dollar currencies — the

euro, the yuan, the yen, the Australian dollar — and partly into gold.

Gold's share of the pie is up, but the move is incremental rather than

revolutionary.

What 2022 Changed

The Russian reserve freeze in early 2022 was the inflection point. With

roughly US$300 billion of Russian central-bank reserves immobilised by

coordinated Western sanctions, every non-Western monetary authority had

to ask a question that had previously been theoretical: if the political

relationship with the United States deteriorated, would my own reserves

remain accessible?²

For most central banks, the honest answer was uncertain, and uncertainty

on a reserves question is not tolerable. The response was not a

fire-sale of dollar assets — that would have been financially damaging —

but a slow reweighting toward assets that carry no such counterparty

risk. Gold, which sits in vaults rather than in electronic systems that

can be frozen by a foreign authority, fits that description better than

any alternative.

The Federal Reserve's International Finance Discussion Paper no. 1420,

published in 2024, examined the question at length and concluded that

central-bank gold buying has moved structurally higher since 2022.¹ The

paper's analysis does not argue that the dollar is losing its status as

the primary reserve currency — it argues that the marginal

reserve-management decision has changed.

The 2025 Data Supporting the Thesis

The 2025 data are consistent with a continuing, deliberate rebalancing.

Central banks bought 863 tonnes of gold in 2025, following net purchases

above 1,000 tonnes in each of the three preceding years.³ The World

Bank's October 2025 Commodity Markets Outlook noted that central-bank

buying had risen to roughly 25 percent of total gold demand by 2024, up

from 12 percent in 2015-2019.⁴

The World Gold Council's 2025 Central Bank Gold Reserves Survey showed

95 percent of participating central banks expecting global reserves to

grow, and 43 percent planning increases in their own holdings over the

next 12 months. The split was sharper by bloc: 48 percent of

emerging-market respondents intended to add gold, against just 21

percent of advanced-economy respondents.³ The message was that the

diversification story is predominantly an emerging-market phenomenon —

and that the accumulation has more room to run.

The Reserve-Asset Math

The arithmetic is worth laying out. Global official-sector holdings of

gold currently total roughly 36,000 tonnes. If the average central bank

were to move just 1 percent of its currency-denominated reserves into

gold over the next five years, the incremental demand would be in the

thousands of tonnes — comparable in magnitude to what central banks have

already added since 2022. The market would absorb this, but not without

continued price support.

The marginal buyer profile also supports the price structure. Central

banks are typically patient, price-insensitive buyers focused on

long-term strategic allocation. That makes them different from

speculative or retail flows. Their purchases smooth volatility rather

than add to it, and the continuity of their buying matters more than the

absolute monthly rate.

There is also a reflexivity dimension worth acknowledging. As central

banks accumulate gold, the asset's role in the reserve framework becomes

more institutionally entrenched, which in turn encourages further

accumulation by peer institutions. That self-reinforcing loop is one

reason the post-2022 trend has persisted across different macro

environments, rate cycles and political administrations.

Brazilian Implications

Brazil is not a large central-bank gold holder — the Brazilian Central

Bank has historically held a relatively small gold reserve compared to

China, Russia or Turkey. But the de-dollarization story matters for

Brazil in three indirect ways.

First, as a gold-producing country, Brazil benefits from the price

support generated by official-sector buying elsewhere. A structurally

higher price environment underwrites capital investment in Brazilian

operations, including the 2025 production and capex cycle at Paracatu

and across the mid-tier.

Second, Brazil sits on the supply side of a broader critical-minerals

de-concentration agenda. As Western economies try to reduce dependence

on Chinese critical-minerals supply, Brazil becomes a strategically

valued partner. The DFC loan to Serra Verde in rare earths and European

Commission engagement on Mercosur critical minerals both reflect this

dynamic.⁵

Third, over time, Brazil may itself shift the composition of its

official reserves. The Brazilian Central Bank has quietly increased gold

holdings during the current cycle, following a pattern similar to other

large emerging markets. If that rebalancing continues, Brazil would move

from being purely a gold supplier to also being a gold buyer at the

sovereign level.

Outlook

De-