Global currency makeup: Time for a shake-up? | ShapingFX series
US dollar (USD) dominance has shaped the global financial system for decades. However, recent developments including the growing international use of the Chinese renminbi (CNH), geopolitical fragmentation and the rise of digital currencies may signal a more multipolar global currency landscape. This paper explores the
ongoing developments in the international currency landscape, with a particular focus on USD and CNH.
Key insights:
-
- The US dollar remains the dominant currency in the global FX market.
- The renminbi has doubled its share of global FX turnover since 2019 and is now the fifth most traded currency.
- Geopolitical fragmentation and technological change may reshape the international monetary system.
- Some economists expect the currency system to become more multipolar and less dollar-centric.
The BIS Triennial Survey: The current FX landscape
Every three years, the BIS Triennial Survey provides not only a snapshot of the global FX market, but also an opportunity to reflect on the international currency landscape and its ongoing evolution. The 2025 survey results detail the role of currencies in the FX landscape, highlighting those that account for the majority of global FX turnover (figure 1). Of the top eight currencies, public discussion has increasingly focused on two, the USD and the CNH.1
The growing internationalization of CNH has led to mounting speculation that it could eventually challenge the international role of USD. The BIS Survey 2025 results show the US dollar on one side of 89.2% of all trades2 and CNH on 8.8% of all trades.3These results reaffirm the US dollar’s dominant role in the FX market over the years, but CNH’s share has more than doubled since 2019, making it the fastest-growing traded currency.4 CNH appears on track to close the gap with pound sterling, which is the fourth most traded currency. Trading in USD/CNH surpassed GBP/USD as the third most traded currency pair, behind only EUR/USD and USD/JPY. USD/CNH volumes observed in 2025 in CLSNet, CLS’s automated bilateral payment netting calculation service for over 120 currencies, confirm its place among the fastest-growing
currency pairs. The evident link between these currencies warrants further exploration.
Is the global financial system at a critical inflection point?
Economist Kenneth Rogoff remarked in his 2025 publication that the ‘global financial system is at a critical inflection point’5 analogous to the fall of the Bretton Woods System in 1973, which marked the birth of the modern FX market and the solidification of full-fledged USD global dominance. Rogoff questioned whether the dollar’s time as the leading currency, with the ‘US at top of the food chain’,6 could be coming to an end
for reasons including the unsustainability of the US’s unique ‘exorbitant privilege,7 geopolitical considerations and other nations’ efforts to escape US dollar dominance.’
Is the global financial system on the brink of a new era? Answering this question requires an understanding of how the currency landscape could change. Though the FX market is the largest financial market in the world, a thorough analysis of the prospective global outreach of the US and Chinese monetary systems must look beyond the BIS Survey data and consider the key functions that mark a currency’s global status,8 such as its global turnover as a medium of exchange, its role in international payments, debt and trade and use as an international reserve currency.9 These factors are underpinned by wider considerations such as geopolitics and legal concerns.
1 There are two types of Chinese renminbi: the onshore renminbi (CNY), which is traded within mainland China, and offshore renminbi (CNH), which is traded outside mainland China. The growth in Chinese renminbi over recent years has been in CNH.2 Note that the sum of shares in individual currencies totals 200% as two currencies are involved in each FX trade.
3 Note at the time of publication in May 2026, only the preliminary BIS Triennial Survey 2025 data has been published.
4 Renminbi propels the growth of EMDE currency trading.
5 Rogoff, K. (2025). Our dollar, your problem: An insider’s view of seven turbulent decades of global finance, and the road ahead. Yale University Press.
6 Rogoff, 2025, page 4.
7 The term ‘exorbitant privilege’ was first coined by French President Charles de Gaulle in 1965 when speaking about the special status of the US dollar under the Bretton Woods system. It refers to the ability of the US to finance a current account deficit at very low rates of interest. This ability has stemmed from the dollar being the anchor of the global financial system which has ensured that central banks held dollars as official reserves and that the dollar is the primary currency to settle international trade. This feature has continued since the fall of Bretton Woods in 1971, and since that time the US has had large external imbalances. See Eichengreen, B. (2011), Exorbitant Privilege:
The Rise and Fall of the Dollar and the Future of the International Monetary System, Oxford, Oxford University Press.
8 fx-ecosystem_07_cls-and-fx_a-pioneering-partnership-with-pivotal-purpose-shapingfx-series.pdf
9 The Fed - The International Role of the U.S. Dollar – 2025 edition.
Trusted by thousands of counterparties within the global FX ecosystem, CLS makes FX safer, smoother and more cost effective. Trillions of dollars’ worth of currency flows through our systems each day.
