---
title: 'They Stopped Trusting The Dollar'
source: 'https://youtube.com/watch?v=mkPc3DCZ-Ec'
video_id: 'mkPc3DCZ-Ec'
date: 2026-09-15
duration_sec: 1435
channel: 'Minority Mindset'
---

# They Stopped Trusting The Dollar

> Source: [They Stopped Trusting The Dollar](https://youtube.com/watch?v=mkPc3DCZ-Ec)

## Summary

The video discusses a historic shift where central banks now hold more gold than U.S. Treasuries, driven by concerns over U.S. debt and geopolitical events. It explains the implications for the dollar's value and offers investment strategies based on whether the economy or debt will dominate.

### Key Points

- **Gold overtakes Treasuries** [00:00] — For the first time in history, central banks own more gold than U.S. Treasuries, signaling a loss of confidence in U.S. debt.
- **Gold repatriation** [00:27] — France has pulled its physical gold from the U.S. Federal Reserve, and Germany is considering doing the same.
- **De-dollarization of gold** [00:43] — Hong Kong launched a gold settlement system that allows buying gold with Chinese yuan, bypassing the dollar.
- **Fiat currency explained** [01:01] — The U.S. dollar is a fiat currency backed by trust, not physical gold, making it vulnerable to loss of confidence.
- **End of gold standard** [03:12] — In 1971, Nixon took the dollar off the gold standard to avoid default, leading to unlimited money printing and inflation.
- **Debt-to-GDP ratio** [08:29] — The debt-to-GDP ratio rose from 55% in 2000 to 125% in 2026, indicating the U.S. is 'underwater' on its debt.
- **Asset freezes** [09:39] — The U.S. freezing Russian assets after the Ukraine invasion signaled to other countries that their dollar holdings could be at risk.
- **Petrodollar history** [14:36] — The petrodollar was established in 1974 with Saudi Arabia, requiring oil purchases in dollars, which supported dollar demand.
- **Saudi-China oil deal** [15:04] — In 2024, Saudi Arabia made a deal with China to buy oil in yuan, further challenging dollar dominance.
- **Yuan's limited role** [16:09] — The Chinese yuan has grown to about 2% of world reserve assets, but the main shift is toward gold, not yuan.
- **Investment framework** [17:49] — If debt outpaces the economy, debasement assets like gold, silver, and Bitcoin are favored; if economy grows faster, American assets like the S&P 500 are better.

### Conclusion

The video highlights a historic shift where central banks are moving from U.S. Treasuries to gold, driven by debt concerns and geopolitical events. It underscores the importance of trust in fiat currency and offers investment strategies based on whether the economy or debt will dominate.

## Transcript

It's official. For the first time in history, central banks around the world are buying less United States debt, and instead they're buying more gold, because gold has just overtaken United States Treasuries as a world reserve asset.
But that's not all. Countries around the world are getting concerned about the health of the United States government, so they're moving their wealth outside of the United States. France just pulled all of their physical gold out of the United States Federal Reserve,
and now Germany is considering doing the same thing. But it gets a little worse. Oftentimes not that long ago, if you wanted to buy gold anywhere in the world, it was generally priced in United States dollars. But Hong Kong just launched a new way to be able to purchase gold without the United States dollars.
Instead, they're pricing gold in the Chinese Yuan. Take a listen. The city's central clearing and settlement system for gold begins trial operations with its first transaction completed today. because after all, if gold is the world's safe haven, then Hong Kong will be its safe harbor.
The reason why all this matters is the United States dollar is not backed by physical gold. It's backed by a promise that the United States dollar has value. And that promise is valuable if people are using the United States dollar. But if people are less trusting of the dollar, if less countries are using the dollar,
well, that hurts the value of the dollar. and that makes life more expensive for people that use the United States dollars. So in this video, what I want to do is break down what's going on, and then I'll go over what this means and how I can activate that opportunity.
So make sure you stick with me until the end of this video. By the way, I ran a survey and I asked, what are you most concerned about in the economy right now? And the most popular answer was the dollar losing value. And that's why on September 29th, I'm hosting a live, free, and virtual investor workshop
where I'm going to be going over how you can profit from the dollar losing value based off of things that I'm doing and my friends are doing. It's a free workshop. I'm doing it twice on September 29th, once at 10.30 a.m. Eastern Time.
Then again, I'm doing the same workshop in the evening at 8 p.m. Eastern Time. So if you'd like to register for free, all you have to do is click the link down in the description. And I'll just make you do so soon because we have a limited number of people that can actually join the live.
And when you sign up for the workshop as a free bonus, you're also going to get access to Market Brief, which is my newsletter for investors. Completely for free. For many decades, countries around the world kept their reserves in United States debt
because it was considered a very safe investment and it was a great investment that paid out strong interest rates. But now they're starting to change. Countries are saying, we don't know if we trust the United States debt so much
because the United States now has over $40 trillion worth of national debt. So we need an alternative and the new alternative is gold. Take a look. Back in the year 1971, the United States dollar was backed by physical gold.
So gold and dollars were connected one to one. And back then, 33% of the world's reserves were in physical gold. 20% were in the United States treasuries, meaning lending money to the United States government.
30% was saved in the United States dollar. And then the euro did not exist at that time. But look at what happened next. because on August 15, 1971, then-President Richard Nixon took the United States dollar temporarily off of the gold standard.
I have directed Secretary Conrad to sustain temporarily the convertibility of the dollar into gold or other reserve assets. Your dollar will be worth just as much tomorrow as it is today. The effect of this action, in other words, will be to stabilize the dollar.
The reason why he did that was the United States government had a lot of debt and was on the verge of defaulting so to protect the government from defaulting on their debt, he took the dollar off of the gold standard that way we could print an unlimited amount of money
and now all our problems were solved. We just printed blank checks and paid off all of our bills, but then came the inflation of the 1970s. During the 1970s, we had the most inflation that we have seen in modern history,
even more than during the pandemic time. And because of all the inflation, people lost trust in the United States dollar, people lost trust in the United States treasury, So what did central banks and governments around the world do? They didn't want to own the dollar or treasuries.
They wanted to own more physical gold. So what we saw is that gold became a very strong store of wealth around the world by the year 1980. United States treasuries, meaning lending money to the United States government, fell down to 15%.
And the United States dollar fell down to 15% as well. Well, again, the euro did not exist. Then what we saw happen in the 1980s was the Federal Reserve Bank had to jack up interest rates to double-digit levels,
almost 20%, which created a deep recession, a very high unemployment rate, but it saved the dollar. And then what we saw happen again is people started trusting the dollar, and they started trusting the United States government debt.
So gold became a smaller fraction, 11% of the world's reserve currency, and instead what people wanted was the United States Treasury. which was now 30% of the global reserve asset.
The United States dollar about 28%, which means about 58% total in the United States dollar, and then 17% now in the euro, because now the euro exists. But the reason why countries now wanted more of treasuries and dollars versus gold
was treasuries pays interest. Gold doesn't. When you own a bar of gold and it sits in a vault somewhere, it doesn't pay you anything. These treasuries are backed by the United States government, and they're paying an interest rate, so governments are getting richer,
so long as these treasuries are valuable. But now take a look at what's happening today in 2026. Gold is making a comeback again. Gold is now up to 27% of the world's reserve assets. United States treasuries have fallen to 22%.
The United States dollar has fallen to 20%, and the euro has fallen to 15%. Why are these currencies falling? Because of national debt. Remember, these currencies are not backed by physical metals.
Our dollar is not backed by physical gold So as we print more money we now have over trillion worth of national debt When the government spends money it doesn have that means each dollar loses value
So these countries around the world are saying, well, we want our assets to grow, or at least not lose value. And so they're saying maybe it's safer for us to own gold than United States dollars or United States debt.
Because, yeah, we might get paid back, but those dollars might have less value when they get paid back because the government is printing so much money and we have concerns about inflation. This is why on my channel I love to talk about history because while history doesn't exactly
repeat itself, it does rhyme and while a lot of people like to guess and predict what's going to happen, I just like to take a look at what has happened in the past. And the best way for me to understand what's happening is to give you the example of buying a house.
Let's assume that you want to buy this $500,000 house. Now, if you went out and you bought this house and you got a $400,000 loan, I think most people will look at this and say, hey, that's fair.
You put down 20% as a down payment. You got an 80% loan. If you can afford the multi-payment, not a big deal. This is 80% loan to value. But now, let's flip the script.
What if now you went to the bank, you said, hey, I want to buy this $500,000 house. I don't have $500,000. I don't even have $100,000 for the down payment. Can you give me all $500,000? Plus, I want to renovate the basement.
Plus, I want some new furniture. Plus, I want to pay for the moving costs. Plus, I want a brand new TV. So now, in this instance, you got a $600,000 loan for your $500,000 house. In this case, you have 120% loan-to-value.
This is where a lot of people now would be concerned because if you can't make your payments, Well, you are underwater on your house, and you can start to see how that would be a problem because you have more debt than what the house is worth. So if you can't pay, well, you're already underwater.
The bank's not going to be able to get their money back. Well, when we're talking about the United States government debt, the collateral is no longer a house, and it's no longer physical gold. It used to be pre-1971, but now because the dollar is not backed by gold,
our collateral is not a house, it's not physical gold. It is the strength of our United States economy. And the United States economy is measured through a number called GDP, which is measures all spending that happens in our economy.
So let's just take a look at how our economy is being measured to our debt and where that has transformed over the last 26 years. Back in the year 2000, our United States economy GDP was $10.2 trillion.
Our national debt was around $5.7 trillion, which means our debt-to-GDP ratio was right around 55%, which is what many people would say is healthy. Fast forward to the year 2026, and our economy grew significantly.
Now it's $32 trillion large, but so did our national debt. Our national debt grew from $5.7 trillion to just over $40 trillion, which means our national debt grew significantly faster than our economy
because now our debt-to-GDP ratio is about 125%. We are underwater on our debt relative to the size of our economy, and this is why some people, countries around the world, individual people,
are saying, I don't feel so comfortable continuing to lend my money to the United States government because you're already underwater. And if you keep printing more money, that's going to create more inflation.
So we'd rather own something like physical gold. And that's what we've seen happen. But that's not all. There's one more thing that happened in the last few years that has countries around the world questioning if they want to keep their money and wealth here versus something like physical gold.
When Russia invaded Ukraine back in 2022, Russia had some of their assets stored right here with United States dollars and United States treasuries. Well, the United States was not happy when Russia invaded Ukraine. So, what the United States did when they saw Russia do that is they then said,
Okay, your assets and United States dollars, you can't access them. We have just frozen your assets, your money. And other countries around the world were saying, Maybe we don't agree with Russia, maybe we do.
but we don't like the idea of the United States punishing them by freezing their assets. So maybe we want to get out of these United States assets and be more into physical gold.
Just take a look at what Putin had to say when he met with Tucker Carlson. What does the debt of $33 trillion tell us about? As soon as the political leadership decided to use the U.S. dollar as a tool of political struggle,
a blow was dealt to this American power. I would not like to use any strong language, but it is a stupid thing to do and a grave mistake. Look at what is going on in the world. Even the United States' allies are now downsizing their dollar reserves.
Seeing this, everyone starts looking for ways to protect themselves. But the fact that the United States applies restrictive measures to certain countries, such as placing restrictions on transactions, freezing assets, etc.,
causes great concern and sends a signal to the whole world. Do you even realize what is going on or not? Does anyone in the United States realize this? What are you doing? You are cutting yourself off.
All experts say this. Ask any intelligent and thinking person in the United States what the dollar means for the U.S. You are killing it with your own hands. The reason why all this matters, again, is because the United States dollar is called a fiat currency.
It's not backed by physical gold. It's backed by a promise that the dollar has value. and the dollar only has value if people believe it has value and people want to use the dollar. The more people that actually keep their money and savings and wealth in the dollar,
the more that people are transacting with the dollar, the more that your dollar has value, the cheaper your life is. Because the stronger your dollar is, the cheaper your groceries are, the cheaper your cars are, the cheaper your electronics are.
But if people don have trust in the dollar well now all of a sudden this piece of paper that you going to buy stuff with doesn have as much buying power and now the prices of everything go up Your paycheck doesn buy as much Your savings don't buy as much, because now you're just hoarding these pieces of paper
that people now think is funny money because they don't want the dollar. That's why this trust and faith in the fiat currency is so important for that fiat currency to be able to survive as a currency.
And when people leave the dollar, or when people don't want to own the dollar, that hurts the value of the fiat currency. That's not all. Countries around the world are not just becoming hesitant to save their money in the United States dollar,
but they're becoming hesitant to keep their gold in the United States vault. In 2026, France, who was an ally with the United States, pulled their physical gold out of the United States Federal Reserve vault
because they wanted to keep it in their vault and not trust it in the United States. Now, there are talks about Germany doing the same thing. Now, I feel like most people, you're probably wondering, well, why does that even matter? And it all has to do with trust.
When these countries around the world would save their physical gold in the United States, they'd say, you are the most strongest economy in the world, you are the most strongest empire in the world, you're the strongest military in the world, we trust our wealth with you.
And now more and more countries are saying, because of some of this uneasiness, we no longer trust you, we had to keep it ourselves. And we've seen why this can be so important. Back in 2019, Venezuela, whose economy was struggling,
went to the Bank of England and said, we want to get our physical gold back. And England said, no. So when you hear the news that France or Germany want to get their physical gold out of the United States, it's generally because they're concerned that something bad could happen
and they don't want to have to run into a situation where they cannot access their wealth. But that's not all. Over the last 50 years or so, if you wanted to buy gold anywhere in the world, it was generally priced in United States dollars. Then you took it to China,
and you want to buy this anti-dollar asset like physical gold, well, that transaction would still be settled in the United States dollar. It would be priced in the United States dollar, and it would be going through the dollar systems.
But that's changing. In July 2026, Hong Kong launched their own gold settlement program, which allows people to be able to buy physical gold without the United States dollar. Instead, you can buy it with the Chinese yuan.
And the reason why that matters, again, is because the United States dollar is backed off of trust and faith. And if less people need the dollar, well then they have less trust or faith in the dollar. And this is a similar story to what we've seen play out in the past.
Back when the United States dollar was taken off of the gold standard in 1971, a lot of people got concerned that there's nothing back in the dollar. How do we know that this dollar has value? It's just a piece of paper. So how are we going to value the dollar?
And that was when, in 1974, the petrodollar was created. The petrodollar was this idea that if you wanted to buy oil anywhere in the world, you'd have to buy it through the United States dollar. How did that happen? Well, in 1974, the United
States made an agreement with Saudi Arabia, and we said, essentially, hey, we'll protect you, Saudi Arabia, you just make sure that everybody buys oil with the United States dollar. So before, if you wanted to buy oil, you had to do it with the United States dollar.
This was a petrodollar that was established in 1974 through Saudi Arabia. Then fast forward to what happened. In 2024, Saudi Arabia made a deal with China that when you could be able to
buy oil, not with the United States dollar, but with the Chinese yuan. Well, now what do we think happened with gold? Before, if you wanted to buy gold, you had to do it with
the United States dollar. It was priced with the dollar around the world. For decades, this was the way, which helped bring faith and trust to the United States dollar, because if you wanted to buy gold anywhere, the dollar had to be involved. But now we're starting to see a shift because as of July 2026, Hong Kong has built a new
settlement system that you can buy physical gold not with the United States dollar but with the Chinese Yuan. Now just to be clear, I want to make one thing explicitly clear. A lot of people have been worried about the Chinese Yuan overtaking the United States
dollar as a world's reserve currency. And just so I can make this explicitly clear, if we take a look at world reserve assets around the world, gold, United States Treasuries, United States Dollars, the Euro.
Well, in the year 2026, the Chinese Yuan has grown from around 0% of the world's reserve asset to approximately 2% of the world's reserve asset.
So it's not a huge player, but the big thing here is people are trying to move away from the United States Dollar, and instead, what are they trying to move to? It's not necessarily the Chinese Yuan. It's right here, it is this gold that we're seeing more central banks around the world move to,
or countries around the world move to, because they want something more stable than the United States dollar. Now, based off of all recorded data that we have public access to, the United States is the number one holder of physical gold in the world.
But the biggest concern that people have is what is going to happen to the value of the United States dollar, and that ultimately depends on one thing. What is going to win, our economy or our debt? because what we have seen for the last number of decades is our national debt has way outpaced our economy.
We went from around a 55% debt-to-GDP ratio in the year 2000 to 125% debt-to-GDP ratio in the year 2026. And so what are we going to see over the next decade?
Are we going to see our economy blow past our national debt, in which case a lot of the concerns and worries are probably going to go away? Or is the national debt going to grow faster than our economy, in which case these worries and concerns are probably going to get a whole lot worse.
And the reason why you want to understand is that's going to change where some of the best and biggest investment opportunities are going to be. This is exactly what I'm going to be going very deep into on my live workshop on September 29th. So if you haven't registered for that, again, I have that link linked down in the description.
But there's two ways you can think about this. If you are concerned that our United States national debt is going to continue to outpace our economy Are we going to keep spending more money and our economy is not going to keep up well then you more concerned about inflation
And if you're more concerned about inflation, well, the more common debasement assets are things like gold, silver, Bitcoin. Now, silver is the most volatile. Bitcoin is also extremely volatile. Gold is more of the traditional debasement concern asset.
The idea being you have all these countries around the world buying gold, you have central banks around the world buying gold and it's been hard money for centuries. On the flip side, if you believe that the government is going to either contain the debt or the economy is going to grow faster
than the debt, well then you just want to own the economy and you want to own American assets. You can just buy something like the S&P 500, you can buy more of American whatever assets that you want, stocks, and now you can own a piece of the economic growth. Again,
And nobody knows what the future is. My goal is to show you what's going on. That way you can be a smarter investor and make sure that you have the best plan for yourself. And that starts with the right education of knowing what's happening.
That way you can allocate your money the right way. Investing your money is hard. And on this channel, I teach how you can start investing your money yourself. But for some of you, working with a financial advisor, somebody who is a professional will be a better option because now it's more hands-off.
And you can work with a professional who will manage and invest your money for you. and that's why I partnered with my sponsor Money Pickle. The reason why I like Money Pickle is because first they get to know you and what your needs are and then they match you with a vetted financial advisor
who will be best suited for your needs and then they give you a free consultation call with the financial advisor. That way you can get a feel of the financial advisor and see if they're right for you or not. That way you don't have to go through a high pressure sales process
with somebody who might not even be a good fit for you. If you're interested in learning more and you have over $100,000 in assets, the process is pretty simple. All you have to do is complete a short form. I have that link for you down in the description.
It takes a few minutes to complete. And once you do that, Money Pickle will review your answers and then pair you with a vetted financial advisor who they believe is best suited for you. It's a completely free process.
That initial consultation, again, is free. and then if you decide to move forward, then you can negotiate and discuss what your rates and terms look like with that financial advisor directly. So, if you want help managing your money and you want to work with a vetted financial advisor,
my sponsor Money Pickle can help get you paired up with a financial advisor at no additional cost. If you want to learn more, I have that link for you down in the description. So, what we're talking about in this video is that for the first time in modern history, central banks around the world now own more gold than they do United States Treasuries.
Why? Because they are concerned about the United States Treasuries and the value here. And so they rather own an asset that pays zero interest like gold because they believe that that is a better asset for them.
Now, we saw this trend really accelerate post pandemic for two reasons. Number one was because we had a huge amount of money printing that happened during the pandemic, which devalued the dollar.
Because remember, our dollar is not backed by physical gold. It is a fiat currency, which means it's backed by a promise that the dollar has value. So it's just a piece of paper. And so when we started printing trillions and trillions of dollars,
people felt rich even though no wealth was being created, and so the cost of that was inflation. The price of the things went up, the value of the dollar went down. Then the second thing that we saw happen was after Russia invaded Ukraine,
what we saw is that the United States froze these assets, United States dollar assets from Russia because they did not like what Russia did. This then signaled to other countries around the world saying, huh, maybe we should get some of our wealth out of the United States dollar
because if we do something the United States doesn't like, they can then punish us by freezing our assets. So what we saw is that now countries around the world have a working to buy more gold than United States treasuries and United States dollars.
And the reason why that matters is because our fiat currency is backed by trust and it's backed by faith. It's not backed by the gold. And as we've seen, our debt-to-GDP ratio goes from around 55% back in the year 2000 to 125% now in 2026.
There's been more and more concerns about the United States dollar, and that has been one of the triggers for people to now leave the dollar and look for something else. What is it something else? Well, it's in physical gold, as you've been seeing gold rise as a reserve asset around the world.
But that's not all. We're also seeing some countries lose their trust in where they want to keep their physical gold because France has now pulled their physical gold out of the United States Federal Reserve vault. And Germany is talking about doing the same thing.
While at the same time, we've also seen Hong Kong work to build their own settlement system so people can buy gold without the United States dollar instead with the Chinese yuan. Again, why does all this matter?
because the dollar is backed by trust and faith. And if people are using the dollar less, there's less trust and faith in the dollar, which hurts the value of your dollar, which makes things more expensive.
So then what we talked about is what does this mean from an investment opportunity? Well, if you believe that the dollar is going to continue losing value, that our national debt is going to outpace our economy, well then some of the debasement assets
could be a great place to start. Again, I'm not here to tell you what to invest in. I'm just showing you how to think like an investor. or if you believe the economy can outpace the debt and you want to own a piece of the economy. And with that, if you got value out of this video,
the best thank you is a referral. So if you could, please share this video with a friend, family member, colleague, or fellow investor. That way we can continue to spread this type of financial education. Thank you. For most of the last 15 years,
it was cheaper for you to buy a house than it was to actually rent a house. But now that has flipped. It has become so expensive to buy a house that we're now turning into a buyer's market because sellers can't sell their houses for their cutting prices and giving concessions
because buyers are saying, it's cheaper for me to rent. Because people think you're weird.