If monk Occam had lived to the 21st century and tried to comprehend the structure of the world economy, he would probably not only have lost his speech — he would have burned his notes and gone into digital hermitage. His famous 'razor', according to which 'entities should not be multiplied beyond necessity', would have dulled on the very first attempt to 'uncover' the structure of the global currency system. We live in a world where entities multiply — currencies, derivatives, schemes, superstructures, central banks, cryptocurrencies, ETFs. Complexity has become the new norm. But the more complex the structure, the higher the chance of its collapse.
It is against this backdrop that the idea of using tariffs as a weapon and Bitcoin as an alternative to the dollar no longer seems madness. Especially if someone like Donald Trump, for whom 'breaking the system' is not a bug but a feature, gets involved.
The Dollar Trap and Triffin's Paradox Since the Bretton Woods agreement, the dollar has become the main global reserve currency. But with this privilege came the curse described in Triffin's Paradox: the issuer country of the global currency must provide liquidity to the world, that is, export dollars, which is achieved only through a trade balance deficit. This leads to chronic negative balances, the outflow of production abroad, and, as a consequence, deindustrialization.
The USA, in order to remain the heart of the global economy, is forced to slowly deplete its industrial base. This systemic anomaly has been accumulating for decades — like an internal bug embedded in the very architecture of the financial order.
Bankor, SDR, and the phantom of supranational currencies Can we escape the dollar trap? John Maynard Keynes proposed a solution back in the mid-20th century — to create a bankor, a supranational currency issued by an independent global institution. This idea seemed too radical, and at the post-war conference in Bretton Woods, it was rejected in favor of the dollar backed by gold.
However, the echo of the bankor did appear — in the form of Special Drawing Rights (SDR), introduced by the IMF in 1969. SDR is an international reserve asset based on a basket of major currencies. But it has not become a full-fledged world currency: it is not used in the private sector, is not a means of payment in international trade, and generally serves as an accounting record between central banks and international organizations.
Thus, both the bankor and SDR are missed opportunities, attempts to escape dollar hegemony without sufficient political will and institutional weight.
Gold, Bitcoin, and a new candidate for the role of a global standard Today, gold and Bitcoin are contenders for a new global currency entity.
• Gold is a non-political asset, tried and tested over time, independent of the decisions of a specific issuer. It remains one of the key tools for central banks during periods of turbulence.
• Bitcoin is a new digital equivalent of gold, based on transparency, decentralization, and limited issuance. It is independent of central banks, immune to sanctions, and gaining institutional recognition: from ETFs to the balance sheets of public companies.
Ideas are increasingly voiced that the future world reserve system may be based not on a single currency, but on a 'hybrid basket' that includes gold, digital assets, and possibly an updated version of SDR. This would be a symbiosis of the material and the digital — a kind of 'new bankor', but born not in the IMF corridors, but as a result of systemic shift and market adaptation.
Mining — a new tool of emission control If Bitcoin indeed becomes part of the new global financial architecture, the struggle will unfold for control over its creation — mining. And the USA is already taking steps in this direction:
• Expansion of mining capacities domestically
• Attracting institutional investors such as BlackRock and Fidelity
• Formation of a legislative framework for regulating the crypto sector
Even at the political level, interest in mining has become palpable. In spring 2025, it became known that Donald Trump's sons became partners in the American Bitcoin project. This move is not about crypto-enthusiasm, but about an attempt to strategically establish a foothold in the emerging monetary ecosystem. Control over hash rate is becoming a new form of monetary sovereignty, where issuers do not print money but accumulate computational power.
Tariffs, sanctions, and geo-economics as weapons At the same time, global trade is becoming less like a market and more like a stage for political struggle. Trade tariffs, export restrictions, asset freezes, and sanctions against competitors have all become the norm. The USA and other powers openly use economic mechanisms as levers of geopolitical pressure.
This gives rise to a paradox: the economic system built on the freedom of trade and liberal principles increasingly operates by the laws of extortion and selective availability.
There is no plan. There is a system that devours itself At such moments, one especially wants to believe in the existence of some 'deep state' or 'world backstage', where rational technocrats distribute roles and implement a global plan. But it seems that if a plan exists, then each of its participants adds a drop of their idiocy and personal gain to it.
Each new round of the crisis increasingly resembles not an orchestra with a conductor, but a jam session of greedy and cowardly performers, where each plays their own melody without listening to the others.
We are witnessing how a system created for stability and fairness is turning into an ouroboros: it consumes itself, creates new entities to save the old ones, launches mechanisms that devour those who launched them.
This is not the end — but it is no longer the beginning that its architects dreamed of.
P.S. No Occam's Razor was harmed in the writing of this article.