Macro-financial risk
2026-04-26
11 minute read
16 sources
Gold, sanctions, and the slow erosion of the dollar reserve standard
The 2022 freezing of Russian central bank assets triggered a structural reset in how emerging market reserve managers think about safety. Three years later, official sector gold buying has stayed above 1,000 tonnes annually, the dollar share of allocated reserves has drifted to 58 percent, and the gold price has cleared $2,700 per ounce on a flow that primary dealers can no longer ignore.
Between 2022 and 2024 the official sector bought 3,164 tonnes of gold, the heaviest three year run on record. The trigger was the February 2022 freeze of roughly $300 billion of Russian central bank reserves, which reset the calculus for every reserve manager outside the G7 perimeter. The People's Bank of China, the Reserve Bank of India,...