The United States has been the ultimate safe haven for global investors for decades now.
Treasuries were unquestioned collateral, the dollar was the world’s anchor, and confidence in Washington’s balance sheet was as close as markets came to certainty.
But things are starting to change. Talk of a shattering confidence in the US are beginning to circulate. And there is evidence to back this up.
Long-dated government bonds are selling off, gold is breaking records, and investors are circling bitcoin again. BRICS nations are not playing around.
All of these together are strong signs that the world’s financial architecture is facing a re-rating. Investors are searching for what some are calling “neutral reserve assets.” Assets that no single government can dilute, sanction, or weaponize.
Why are long bonds under pressure?
The US Treasury market has become the center of attention for all the wrong reasons. The yield on the 30-year bond has hovered near 5 percent, the highest in years, moving in tandem with selloffs across the UK, eurozone, Japan and Australia.
The common denominator is the rising term premium, the extra compensation investors now demand to hold long bonds.
According to the New York Fed’s ACM model, the 10-year term premium has recently climbed to levels last seen more than a decade ago. That is due to enormous issuance colliding with growing uncertainty.
The US expects to borrow more than one trillion dollars in the third quarter of 2025 alone, with another six hundred billion in the final months of the year. These are staggering amounts, even for the world’s reserve currency.
And the current macro backdrop is not helping. August payrolls rose by just 22,000 jobs, while the unemployment rate edged up to 4.3%. Benchmark revisions revealed the economy had created nearly a million fewer jobs over the past year than previously reported.
What’s worse is that for the first time since the lockdown shock of 2020–2021, the number of unemployed Americans now exceeds available job openings.
A weaker labor market would normally anchor yields lower, but the torrent of supply has forced investors to reprice the risk of holding duration.
Foreign buyers have not walked away, but the change is evident. Japan’s holdings rose to roughly 1.15 trillion dollars in June, while China’s continued to decline toward 756 billion.
Auctions are clearing, but only at yields that reflect higher uncertainty and heavier risk premia.
Why gold is breaking records
Gold has surged to successive record highs, trading above 3,640 dollars per ounce this month. The driver is not only speculative flows but also the official sector.
The People’s Bank of China extended its buying streak to a tenth month in August. Central banks have been adding more than a thousand tonnes of bullion per year for three years running, a pace last seen in the 1960s.
ETF flows confirm the private side of the story. In August, gold-linked funds saw nearly four billion dollars of inflows in a single week, the largest since April.
Gold mining equities have become a leveraged bet on this trend. The GDX miners ETF has rallied almost 100 percent year to date, while Newmont, the only gold miner in the S&P 500, is one of the index’s top performers.
The appeal is clear. Gold offers no yield, but it offers something more valuable in today’s climate: it cannot be printed, sanctioned, or debased by policy. It is the only universally accepted asset outside the control of any single government.
In a world of trillion-dollar deficits, tariffs, and weaponized finance, that neutrality carries a premium.
What BRICS and the SCO are building
Geopolitics adds another layer to the story. At the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit in Tianjin this month, President Xi Jinping called for a “new global governance initiative” and offered aid, loans, and technology projects to fellow members.
He proposed a new development bank and deeper use of national currencies in trade settlement. Russia’s President Putin and India’s Prime Minister Modi stood beside him in a carefully staged show of unity.
The intent is unmistakable. China and Russia want to build non-dollar payment rails. India is more pragmatic, pushing the bloc to address its trade deficits, especially with China, but still participating in the institutional architecture.
The broader BRICS group, now expanded to include new members from the Middle East and Africa, is also pushing for ways to settle trade without the dollar.
However, it is unlikely that any of this will displace Treasuries or the dollar tomorrow. The US system remains deep, liquid, and unrivaled.
But each new step, such as a local-currency oil trade here, a regional development bank there, chips away at the monopoly. And in the gap between ambition and execution lies gold.
For central banks that cannot yet trust a yuan-settled system or a ruble-backed stablecoin, gold is the bridge asset.
Where bitcoin and crypto fit in
Bitcoin is not finding its way into official reserves, at least not yet. Although the Swiss National Bank chairman, Martin Schlegel, advocates for it.
Central banks still see it as too volatile and illiquid. But in private portfolios, and increasingly in payment infrastructure, it is becoming a parallel neutral reserve.
Coinbase’s CEO Brian Armstrong, has suggested that US fiscal stress could ultimately push bitcoin toward global-reserve status in private hands.
Policy is evolving fast. In July, the US passed the GENIUS Act, creating a clear framework for stablecoins.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has argued that regulated stablecoins, backed by Treasury bills, could actually strengthen dollar supremacy. In other words, crypto rails may end up extending the dollar’s reach rather than undermining it.
Russia has taken the opposite rhetorical line. A senior adviser to President Putin accused Washington of trying to “rewrite the rules of the gold and crypto markets” to escape its thirty-five trillion dollar debt.
The claim was that the US would move its debt into stablecoins, devalue it, and start again. The irony is that Russia itself is working on a ruble-backed stablecoin for cross-border payments.
Here is the real distinction. For states, gold is the neutral reserve asset of choice. For private actors, from family offices to hedge funds, bitcoin is the digital counterpart.
And for governments, stablecoins may serve as the pipes through which trade and finance flow, whether dollar-based or otherwise.
What investors should take away
The rise of neutral reserve assets is not a collapse in confidence in Treasuries for the time being. But it is a repricing.
Investors demand a higher term premium to hold long bonds when deficits are expanding and policy is uncertain. The thing is that this repricing is structural; it’s here to stay.
In the meantime, gold’s record run is not a fad. It is being confirmed by flows, by miners’ performance, and by steady central-bank purchases even at elevated prices.
For reserve managers and for investors, gold is functioning again as a hedge against policy and institutional risk.
Bitcoin’s role is more limited but not trivial. It is unlikely to become an official reserve, but in private portfolios it plays the same role gold plays for central banks: an asset outside the reach of governments, with no counterparty risk. In times of political tension or fiscal strain, it attracts capital.
Perhaps the most striking insight is that the US itself is pushing this evolution. By normalizing stablecoins, it is effectively embedding Treasury paper into digital finance rails.
That could create new demand for bills while simultaneously reinforcing the search for neutral reserves on the long end.
The bond market, gold, and bitcoin are telling one story in different languages. The world is still anchored in the dollar system, but the premium once placed on that anchor is being marked down.
In its place, assets with neutrality, vaultable, digital, or both, are being bid higher. One can only guess what will happen in 5 or 10 years.
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