August 15 marks 55 years since the “Nixon Shock,” when then-U.S. President Richard Nixon stunned the world by suspending the convertibility of the dollar—the world’s reserve currency—into gold. The United States cast off the golden shackles to build dollar hegemony, while wielding its influence over payment networks as a weapon to impose successive rounds of financial sanctions. In recent years, however, wariness over excessive concentration in the dollar has grown, and China, along with many other countries, has been aggressively buying gold as a safe-haven asset. Gold, once again in the spotlight, hit an all-time high in January this year, surging roughly 160-fold from its price at the time of the Nixon Shock.
Dollar dominance is exhibiting signs of “invisible decline.” In March 2022, one month after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, experts at the International Monetary Fund (IMF)…
