The US dollar lost further ground as global reserve currency among many reserve currencies held by central banks. Its share has been zigzagging lower for many years as central banks have been diversifying their holdings to assets denominated in currencies other than the dollar.
And they’ve also been diversifying into gold. But the dollar remains by far the dominant global reserve currency. The share of USD-denominated foreign exchange reserves fell to 57.4% of total exchange reserves the lowest since 1994, according to the IMF’s COFER data for Q3 2024.
USD-denominated foreign exchange reserves include US Treasury securities, US agency securities, US MBS, US corporate bonds, US stocks, and other USD-denominated assets held by central banks other than the Fed.
In Q1 2015, the USD’s share was still 66%. Over these 10 years, the dollar’s share of global reserve currencies has dropped by 8.6 percentage points. If this pace of decline continues, the dollar’s share will fall below 50% in less than 10 years, by the end of 2034.
The dollar’s share had already been below 50% in 1990 and 1991, at the final leg of its long plunge from a share of 85% in 1977 to 46% in 1991, after inflation had exploded in the US in the 1970s, and eventually the world lost confidence in the Fed’s ability or willingness to get this inflation under control.
But by the 1990s, central banks loaded up on dollar-assets again, until the euro came along. This chart shows the dollar’s share at the end of each year (2024 = Q3).
Holdings of US Treasury securities by foreign central banks and other foreign holders have surged from record to record. Over the past 12 months, foreign holders added $880 billion, bringing their stash to a record $8.67 trillion, according to the Treasury Department’s TIC data earlier
