The Digital Backbone of a Post-dollar World
Peter McGahan
Monday 9th June, 2025.
PART 11 in our series: The Global Shift Away from the US Dollar
One of the great illusions is that money is paper, or coins, or those numbers you see on your online banking app. In reality, money is code. In a post-dollar world that’s rapidly taking shape - it’s the one who controls the software, the rails, and the rules embedded in the system which has the power.
Over the past few weeks, I’ve tracked how the world is shifting away from the US dollar through trade agreements, sanctions backfires, and commodity-led settlement systems. This week, I’ll cover the digital engine powering it all.
I’ll start with the basics. The old system where global trade cleared in dollars through New York-based banks and SWIFT messages was never neutral. It was a legal and technical web dominated by US and European institutions. That worked fine if you were on the right side of Washington. Less so if you weren’t.
But now, alternative networks are being built, not just different currencies, but entirely different plumbing.
Project mBridge is one of them. A collaboration between many countries including China, the UAE, Hong Kong and Thailand, backed by the Bank for International Settlements, it lets countries settle trade using digital versions of their own currencies. In a pilot, 20 banks across four countries pulled it off: real money, real-time, no dollars touched. That isn’t boring. It’s revolutionary.
Then there’s China’s digital yuan (e-CNY), which goes beyond just being a digital version of cash. It’s programmable, trackable, and integrated directly into the state’s financial infrastructure. It’s already being used for settlement in Belt and Road trade and could easily become the operating system for a China-led trade bloc.
In contrast, the West is dragging its feet. The US has no digital dollar yet, partly because it fears what one might do to its banking sector, and partly because the current system works just fine for Washington’s interests.
But outside the G7, its very different. Central bank digital currencies (CBDCs,) are no longer experimental playthings. They’re being built as big digital walls of monetary independence. For emerging markets weary of dollar swings and sanction threats, they offer a form of digital non-alignment.
Bitcoin and crypto? They’re not out of the game. While CBDCs are government top down tools of state control, crypto offers the opposite: a bottom-up route to monetary freedom. Stateless, borderless, and (mostly) censorship-resistant, Bitcoin has become a strategic hedge not just for people avoiding government overreach, but also for countries like El Salvador and Russia, who see it as a plan B when access to dollars is cut.
And then there’s tokenised gold (eg Paxos gold (PAXG)). That’s not a metaphor, it’s actual gold, stored in vaults, turned into digital tokens that can be transferred instantly and spent.Its price is up over 100 per cent over the last five years. Russia’s central bank is testing tokenised gold. The UAE is trading with it. It’s gold you can email and unlike dollars, it doesn’t come with strings attached.
So, what does this mean for society?
At the everyday level, this shift is invisible, until it isn’t. The way your salary arrives, how your mortgage clears, how your country buys energy or food is all running on networks. And when those networks change, so does everything from interest rates to inflation to who gets sanctioned next.
The countries building these new systems, from BRICS+ to Southeast Asia aren’t just swapping currencies. They’re writing new rules for the future of money. They’re deciding who gets to trade, who gets to save, and who gets to opt out of the old system.
And once you can trade, settle, and store value entirely outside the US dollar's orbit you’re no longer just financially independent. You’re geopolitically ungovernable.
That’s the real story here. The post-dollar world won’t be declared with fireworks. It’ll arrive through code. Quietly, through digital corridors and programmable currencies, the rules are already changing. And like all the biggest shifts in finance, you’ll only feel it when you realise the world no longer asks permission from the old gatekeepers.
Fundamental to it all is internet access/satellite - without that, nothing works. The race to cover the skies with satellites may now be more obvious.
Next week I will cover what all this actually means to you and your pocket.
To understand the whole structure of dedollarisation, I’m creating a complimentary factsheet which you can register for by emailing info@wwfp.net but if you have a question on the subject, also send me an email to this address also.
Peter McGahan is the Chief Executive Officer of Independent Financial Adviser Worldwide Financial Planning. Worldwide Financial Planning is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority.
