Strategies for preserving monetary value in an increasingly dedollarised world: the role of cryptocurrencies in the struggle to control the projection of digital power
As we reflect on the emergence of a multipolar world and consider, in particular, its multi-nodal and multimodal multipolarity, we do not yet fully realise how widely and diversely these characteristics will manifest themselves in the future.
The emergence of a multipolar world, most vividly expressed in the development of the BRICS as an alternative to the unipolar model, marks the end of centuries of Anglo-Saxon hegemony and represents the victory of the paradigm of decentralisation over the paradigm of centralisation. Humanity has rejected the model of a world centralised around a single pole of power, which inevitably breeds tyranny — as the colonial and neo-colonial experience has empirically proven — opting instead for a model of power decentralised between different poles.
However, the transition period is by no means easy and the challenges facing the world are enormous. One of the key challenges is the preservation of monetary value in an environment of increasing dedollarisation and militarisation of residual financial infrastructures, which destroys all previous equilibria and requires the creation of new structures and balances. Losing the privilege of the petrodollar and the prospect of owning the world’s reserve currency, the US has — and will have — no choice but to continue eroding the dollar’s value through inflation. In March 2020, the M2 monetary aggregate was about USD 15.5 trillion. By March 2025, it is projected to rise to approximately USD 22.5 trillion. This is an increase of USD 7 trillion over five years, which is about 31% of the total M2 money supply by March 2025. Over the same period, the US national debt grew even more dramatically, fr om USD 23.3 trillion in January 2020 to USD 36.2 trillion in January 2025. The increase was USD 12.9 trillion over five years. These are almost unimaginable figures, debt of this magnitude cannot be repaid without catastrophic inflation. In other words, the dollar already has one foot in the grave, while the euro, deprived of even the residual privileges that the dollar has, is already nearly dead, although it is still clinging to life by inertia. These currencies may last a few more years, but not indefinitely. Alternatives are needed.
The BRICS countries in 2022 announced and in 2023 confirmed their intention to create their own common currency, but the project was shelved in 2024. Apparently, the challenge of creating a new currency that could win the consent of all member countries and possibly the rest of the non-aligned world has proved insurmountable for the time being. To circumvent the old financial structures militarised by the collective West, the BRICS came up with an idea of BRICS Clear, a cross-border payment system aimed at reducing dependence on the dollar, and generally set out to reduce the use of the dollar in intra-group transactions and increase the use of national currencies. But this does not address the need for a new monetary instrument capable of providing guarantees for the preservation of monetary value in the medium and long term, which the dollar can no longer ensure. The main problem of any currency that claims to be universally recognised is to reach a consensus, which has always arisen spontaneously throughout the history of money.
The 2008 financial crisis caused by the collapse of sub-prime mortgages in the United States served as the catalyst for the creation of bitcoin by an anonymous developer (or some entity hiding behind the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto). This new technology, often compared to the invention of the wheel or the discovery of fire, is something once invented that cannot be undone. Bitcoin is also referred to as the ‘Internet of Value’ because, just as the internet revolutionised the transfer of information, bitcoin has created a decentralised way of transferring value without intermediaries. No central authority can block or control transactions, making it similar to the freedom of publishing on the internet. In December 2024, President Putin remarked that no one in the world has the power to stop bitcoin.1 This was a milestone in the official recognition of this tool.
1 “For example, let’s take bitcoin, who can ban it? No one. And the use of other electronic means of payment, who can ban it? No one! Because they are new technologies. No matter what happens, no matter what happens to the dollar, these tools will develop one way or another. Because everyone will strive to reduce costs and increase reliability.
The reliability, decentralisation and resilience of the bitcoin network are the main reasons for the growing global consensus on this new instrument. Game theory reinforces this consensus within a virtuous circle, as every actor starting to use bitcoin has a strong interest in protecting its network to preserve the functions it uses and the investments made. The more serious and powerful the entities that begin to utilise bitcoin’s functions, the stronger and more important the corresponding network grows, and the stronger the ‘gravitational’ pull of bitcoin becomes, absorbing additional monetary value from the global economy. American billionaire Michael Saylor, drawing on his MIT education, uses metaphors from the world of physics to argue that bitcoin represents the only form of conservation of ‘monetary energy’ according to the second law of thermodynamics2 and that its force of attraction to the world’s monetary value grows in proportion to the value already attracted — analogous to the law of gravity applied to matter, according to which ideally sooner or later it should attract all value, like a black hole eventually absorbing all matter. Putting aside theoretical extremes, there is no doubt that the more significant the actors accepting bitcoin as a tool, the broader the consensus will be, as mentioned above, within the virtuous circle. Even the internet met with widespread distrust in its early years, and then the consensus expanded rapidly. In fact, the acceptance of bitcoin is happening faster than the acceptance of the internet once did. A study by Blackrock found that bitcoin is spreading 20% faster than the internet once did, and 43% faster than mobile telephony.3 Other studies have yielded similar results.
While in 2011 the total capitalisation of bitcoin was only USD 6.5 million, two years later, in 2013, it reached USD 12 billion. In 2017, this figure rose to USD 335 billion, in 2021 — to USD 1.3 trillion, and by 2025, even the most conservative forecasts suggest growth to almost USD 3 trillion. Over the past 13 years, bitcoin has seen a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 102.36%.
In parallel, an ecosystem of other cryptocurrencies has emerged, the number of which has grown exponentially in recent years. In 2013, the cryptocurrency market was just a handful of tokens, by 2015 the number was in the hundreds, and by 2020 — in the thousands. Then there came a real ‘big bang’ of new cryptocurrencies, and by 2025 their number is already hard to calculate, although some estimates put it at 11 million. However, most of these currencies have little or no value. All this means, above all, two things:
2 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OC7QfgI3zVg;
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q1IRY1XKfX0;
3 https://crypto.news/crypto-adoption-beats-mobile-phones-by-43-and-internet-by-20-reports-blackrock/.
4 https://medium.com/coinmonks/chart-of-the-day-crypto-vs-internet-adoption-19b05d57440a.
We are witnessing a genuine paradigm shift in the perception of the nature of money. Although the process started back in 2009 and impressive results have been achieved, we are only at the beginning of a new era. The institutions, agencies and States that act first and act decisively within this new paradigm will benefit the most.
The standard is the bitcoin protocol, just as the TCP/IP protocol is the standard for the internet. Any alternative can only fulfil auxiliary functions, but cannot replace an already established standard. Any alternative cryptocurrency could easily lose all of its value (and most of them will), but bitcoin has already established itself as an indispensable standard, and dismantling it is not feasible — at least not in the short to medium term. Therefore, a strategic approach to digital currencies should be built around bitcoin, while any approach to other cryptocurrencies can only have tactical value.
As we mentioned above, once invented, bitcoin, like the internet, cannot be ‘uninvented’. So the choice for any significant actor, be it an individual country or a group of countries (e.g., BRICS), is whether to start using it immediately, ahead of other countries, or later, lagging behind them. Obviously, an early start gives a competitive advantage. The ability of this instrument to ‘absorb’ monetary value thanks to the limited number of possible bitcoins, as reflected in the constant and progressive growth of its purchasing power against other commodities, offers an interesting solution to the problem of value preservation in a monetary world undergoing a restructuring crisis due to the advancing and irreversible crisis of the dollar. US President Trump announced with great pomp the creation of a strategic bitcoin reserve for the United States, but his subsequent statements have raised serious doubts as to whether this is a strategic move or rather a tactical concession to the vast cryptocurrency industry that supported him on the campaign trail. It seems that his team understands this issue much more deeply than he does. Nevertheless, the path for the US seems to be mapped out, especially since some states, such as Texas, have already spoken in favour of creating their own strategic bitcoin reserve and are one step away from practical implementation.5 It is highly likely that other nations will follow suit - in the medium to long term, it is plausible to assume that all nations will choose to create a strategic bitcoin reserve, so nations that do so first will have a clear advantage (first-mover advantage) as they will be able to buy assets at lower prices. However, publicly announcing the intention to create such a reserve is by no means the best way to do so - or perhaps even the worst, serving mainly demagogic purposes, since it usually drives up the price of the asset before it is acquired, rather than afterwards, which is clearly inefficient. Therefore, the greatest benefit will be gained by those countries that build up their bitcoin reserve gradually and discreetly, without loud public announcements. Just like in
5 https://www.chron.com/business/technology/article/bitcoin-texas-law-crypto- trump-20197722.php.
chess, in this sphere, it is probably wise not to announce to the whole world about your future moves in the game. It is better to act first and talk later than to talk first and act later.
In the face of the accelerating collapse — partly a structural collapse already, but mainly a collapse of reliability — of the monetary, financial and economic infrastructures left over from Anglo-Saxon unipolar hegemony, the need to be proactive in embracing new technologies and instruments like bitcoin is something fundamental for any country or group of countries, such as the BRICS, seeking a leading role in the emerging new world. As the idea of a common currency was being mulled over by the BRICS group, the need was mentioned to peg it to a basket of reliable assets such as gold and other underlying commodities. Given the growing acceptance of bitcoin, its fungibility, practicality of use and delivery, sooner or later it will inevitably be considered in the context of including strategic reserves in such baskets, so it is logical to act sooner rather than later. A thorough study is needed on the optimal development avenues in this field, assessing at a national or cross-national level the prospects for a bitcoin mining industry as part of a strategic energy plan to promote the development of energy infrastructure in regions wh ere it is insufficient but essential. There are studies that show how the development of the mining industry using renewable energy in underdeveloped regions can further boost their development.6 Case studies of such synergies achieved in China, Bhutan and Iceland already exist, but there are also other examples. We should not underestimate the economic and hence social impact on a country depending on how well it is keeping up with the times in this regard — or, better still, being at the forefront.
It is important to emphasise that mining activities are not only economically profitable through the ‘production’ of bitcoin, but are also strategically important for exercising control over the bitcoin network itself, ensuring that transactions cannot be censored. After Russia was excluded fr om the financial, banking and credit chains controlled by the collective West in 2022, there is an urgent need to provide effective alternatives. Russia’s MIR and the Financial Messaging System are examples — but they do not operate globally, whereas bitcoin operates on a global level. A national strategic bitcoin mining industry is a prerequisite for any state willing to ensure that it is not also excluded from the bitcoin chain in the future, as mining is the process of approving transactions on the network, and it is critical for a sovereign state to participate in this process to the greatest extent possible. As the BRICS countries hold the majority of the world’s territories and resources, they are well placed to secure a dominant position in the bitcoin ecosystem, in the competition for the right to validate transactions, and accordingly gain a strategic advantage in the most rapidly evolving technological field of our time. In the era
6 https://k33.com/research/archive/articles/bitcoin-mining-improves-the-economics-of- renewable-energy.
of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, superior control over advanced digital infrastructures and tools is paramount. We live in an era wh ere software is transforming into a ‘softwar’, becoming a weapon of war for those who have superior control and can use it as a weapon against those with less or no control. The Fourth Industrial Revolution has ushered in an era of dematerialisation of war, and if von Clausewitz were alive today, he would probably call it a continuation of war by other means. Today, technology dematerialises physical processes into software structures, and the projection of power is shifting — or at least diversifying — from the kinetic realm (traditional physical warfare) to the electronic and digital realm. Holding a share of control over the bitcoin network in the future will provide the ability to project digital power, probably in proportion to the amount of control available. What has been said about control over the bitcoin network is largely applicable to control over artificial intelligence systems, which also fit into the software warfare paradigm, but this topic requires a separate analysis.
Beyond the purely monetary aspect, bitcoin is emerging as a politically neutral technology used to project power locally and globally. This process is still in its early stages and has become visible mainly due to the rising value of bitcoin as a unit of account, but is likely to spread to areas beyond purely monetary relations. Bitcoin is not actually a ‘currency’ but a software that forms a global network which is becoming more robust, invulnerable and resilient by the day. This infrastructure will in the long run not only be able to help preserve value in a world plagued by inflation, but also to enshrine in its unalterable archive the principles, international laws and related mechanisms, protecting them from unilateral distortions such as those we see today in the so-called Western ‘rules-based order’. One aspect of a multimodal approach to decentralising power, according to the political paradigm of multipolarity, should probably include a strategy for integrating bitcoin into its equations. Certainly, bitcoin’s decentralisation principle ‘resonates’ with the decentralisation principle of a multipolar world.
One of the seminal texts for understanding the bitcoin paradigm is Saifedean Ammous’ The Bitcoin Standard, a prescient study on the inevitability of bitcoin based on analyses of the long history of money and monetary systems past and present, explaining why bitcoin can reasonably be accepted globally as a store of value.
The research paper by Giulia Bessone, presented at the Politecnico di Torino under the title “Future cryptocurrencies of central banks” (Le future criptovalute delle banche centrali) is a unique analytical study of the CBDC topic with reference to the first developed models: Petro in Venezuela, e-Peso in Uruguay, CryptoRuble in Russia, Estcoin in Estonia and Enta in Cambodia. About fifty other states have initiated similar studies and experiments. ECB announced the launch of the digital euro in October 2025.
7 https://webthesis.biblio.polito.it/23376/1/tesi.pdf?utm_source=chatgpt.com.
CBDC research varies considerably depending on the purposes of the organisations intending to issue them. Because it is programmable money, like all cryptocurrencies, a virtuous state will only issue it to speed up and facilitate payments between organisations and people, whereas a less virtuous state will tend to structure it as ‘conventional money’ the use of which may be prohibited or restricted for certain categories of citizens. In any case, CBDCs need a consensus of users for their operation and long-term viability - a consensus that may be limited to certain states, groups of states, or segments of the population. They may be used for the convenience of regulating exchanges between organisations and states, like so-called stablecoins, but in a world of possible cross-censorship and various ‘sanctions’ bitcoin will remain the ‘monetary instrument of last resort’ available to the free world, and also - to the world less free by nature.