Former US president who hopes to re-enter the White House in 2024 Donald Trump has warned that the US dollar could lose its status as the world's reserve currency.
Speaking on the podcast All In , hosted by tech investors Chamath Palihapitiya, David Friedberg, Jason Calacanis and David Sacks, Trump said countries are dropping the US dollar "like flies," adding that if the US dollar lost its dominant position in global trade, it would be "the equivalent of losing a war."
Trump's comments came shortly after the billionaire Winklevoss twins, who turned to bitcoin and cryptocurrency after their battle with Mark Zuckerberg over the founding of Facebook, announced they would donate 2 bitcoins worth million USD for Trump.
“America is a big piggy bank, but our piggy bank will get smaller and smaller because we are losing power,” Mr. Trump said. "We're losing countries because of the dollar. I mean they're losing like flies. If we lose that it's equivalent to losing a war, it's unbelievable. "
Trump singled out Russia, China, Iran and Saudi Arabia as leading the shift away from the US dollar as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) warned last week of a “noticeable” decline in the share Foreign exchange reserves are allocated in US dollars by central banks and central banks. governments .
“I read that Saudi Arabia is now willing to use many different currencies instead of the dollar,” Trump said. “This is a tragedy, a major thing that is happening to our country and we cannot let that happen.”
Trump's All In podcast appearance follows a cryptocurrency charm offensive during a Silicon Valley fundraiser hosted by Sacks and Palihapitiya, Reuters reported . “He said he would be the president of cryptocurrency,” Trevor Traina, a San Francisco-based technology executive and former Trump ambassador to Austria, was quoted as saying by the news outlet.
Trump has surprised some in Washington with his bitcoin and cryptocurrency holdings in recent weeks after making millions from a series of cryptocurrency-based digital trading tokens (NFTs) and making him in stark contrast to the Biden administration's anti-crypto stance. Trump declared his support for cryptocurrency in late May and began accepting campaign donations in bitcoin as well as the smaller cryptocurrency ethereum and several others.
Earlier this month, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York wrote a report outlining the stories surrounding “the decline in the dollar share of official reserves and the growing role for gold holdings of central banks”, which they said were “inappropriately” generalized beyond “actions”. of a small group of countries."
The report's authors found that global central banks and finance ministries held nearly $12 trillion in foreign exchange reserves by the end of 2023, of which nearly $7 trillion was in dollar-denominated assets. America. According to the report, World Gold Council data shows that “global central banks bought more than 1,100 tons of gold in 2022 – more than double the amount of the previous year – and maintained similar levels of purchases.” in 2023”.
“Fed now admits some countries are turning to gold,” tech investor and former Coinbase chief technology officer Balaji Srinivasan posted to X, pointing to what the Fed says is a “small group” that “represents 3 billion people. So 37.5% of that the world is moving from dollars to gold."
