Tether and the BRICS’ central bank digital currencies are creating parallel, de-dollarized economies

Recent advances in blockchain, tokenization, and distributed ledgers make possible huge volumes of cross-border trade, at near-zero cost, and completely outside the oversight of US and European banking regulators. Ironically, most of the trade is done in US dollars, but entirely outside the US financial system. Tether is a private issuer of stablecoins pegged 1:1 to the US dollar. Tether has over 300 million users, will soon overtake Visa in transactions volume, and is more profitable than Blackrock. With just over $100 billion in reserves, over $190 billion in daily transaction volume runs their systems. The US Department of the Treasury has asked Congress for sweeping new powers, in an attempt to regulate the crypto markets that use US dollars as a medium of exchange outside American banks. Treasury officials singled out Tether as the entity of greatest concern. The BRICS countries, led by China, are tokenizing their vast foreign currency reserves and US dollar holdings.