The Demise of the US$

John Bottomley
3 min readJun 26, 2022

LinkedIn is a business platform, not a political one. That is clear.

However, I wonder how many (western) business leaders are missing the bigger picture regarding the Russian-Ukrainian war. We certainly aren’t getting broad context from corporate media & its impact will be (notice use of future tense) devastating.

First, a few facts:

- Whereas the West has united against this war in admittedly admirable fashion, we are alone. China, India, Brazil, South African, much of Asia, even Saudi Arabia (a US ‘friend’?) have all remained silent regarding the war, with some even providing tacit support (this group defined as “BRIC+”)

- The Russian rouble has strengthened against the (once almighty?) US dollar during the war. It appears commodity-backed currencies are now valued more than paper-promised-fiat-currencies

- Europe finds itself over-dependent on Russian hydrocarbons yet has decided to play “Russian roulette” by betting on LNG and green hydrogen (both medium-to-long term solutions) to replace Russian gas & oil this upcoming winter. #HoldingBreath

- The US, for the first time in history, has weaponised the US dollar via sanctions … sanctions that seem to be hurting US & Europeans more than Russians. But more importantly, such USD weaponisation is accelerating its demise as the world’s reserve currency. Ask yourself this — what central banker would want to hold USD in their treasury when Uncle Sam can make it unusable at the press of a digital button? After all, currency is mostly just ones and zeros these days.

- Saudi is now considering selling oil to China priced in Yuan (goodbye, petrodollar)

- NATO expands east. So much for being a “defensive alliance”; particularly when said expansion undermines Reagan’s, GHWB’s & Clinton’s explicit promises to Russia.

Put simply, this war isn’t only about Russia’s desire to gain eastern Ukrainian territory — that’s a side show. Rather, it’s about ending the US dollar as the world reserve currency & halting the West’s political, economic and military global dominance. And our western leaders’ actions only accelerate this end game.

Politics now drive business like never before; yet most with whom I speak are simply…

John Bottomley

founder, entrepreneur, non-executive director | energy transition evangelist who resides at the nexus of renewables, crypto & p2x | coffee addict -> https://ko