---
title: "For the First Time, More Central Banks Plan to Shrink Their Dollar Holdings"
description: "For the first time on record, more of the world's central banks plan to cut their US dollar holdings than add to them over the coming decade, a major survey of reserve managers finds. The dollar isn't being abandoned — but its near-total grip on global reserves is loosening, with gold the big winner."
category: "Markets"
category_url: https://boursel.com/category/markets
author: "Sofia Marchetti"
published: 2026-06-30T10:43:00.000Z
updated: 2026-06-30T10:43:00.000Z
canonical: https://boursel.com/article/for-the-first-time-more-central-banks-plan-to-shrink-their-dollar-holdings
tags: ["dollar", "central-banks", "reserves", "gold", "markets"]
---
# For the First Time, More Central Banks Plan to Shrink Their Dollar Holdings

For the first time on record, more of the world's central banks plan to cut their US dollar holdings than add to them over the coming decade, a major survey of reserve managers finds. The dollar isn't being abandoned — but its near-total grip on global reserves is loosening, with gold the big winner.

A quiet but historic shift is underway in the world's vaults. For the **first time on record**, more central banks intend to **reduce** their holdings of US dollars over the next decade than to increase them, according to the **OMFIF Global Public Investor 2026** survey of reserve managers, [as reported](https://finance.yahoo.com/economy/policy/articles/first-time-more-central-banks-050116391.html). It's a milestone in the dollar's three-quarters-of-a-century reign as the world's reserve currency — not a collapse, but a clear loosening of its grip.

## What "reserves" are

Central banks hold **foreign-exchange reserves** — stockpiles of foreign currencies, government bonds and gold — to steady their own currencies and keep firepower for a crisis. For decades the **US dollar** dominated, thanks to America's economic heft, deep markets and stable institutions; it became the **reserve currency** that the rest of the world holds and trades in. The OMFIF survey, which polled **about 90 central banks, sovereign funds and public pension funds** managing roughly **$10 trillion**, captures how those managers plan to shift their holdings.

## The shift — and why

The headline finding: it's the first time the survey has recorded a **net plan to cut** the dollar's share. The drivers, by managers' own accounts:

- **Geopolitics.** After the US and its allies **froze roughly $280 billion of Russia's reserves** in 2022, other central banks took note: dollar assets can carry **political risk** if relations sour.
- **US policy and debt.** Worries about American **debt and deficits**, plus tariff and policy uncertainty, have made some managers wary of over-reliance on US assets.
- **Diversification.** In an increasingly multipolar world, spreading risk across more assets is simply prudent portfolio management.

The big beneficiary is **gold.** The survey found a large majority of central banks already hold gold, and a **net ~30% plan to add more** over the next year or two — gold's appeal being that, unlike dollar reserves, it sits outside any other government's control. Central banks have been buying bullion at the fastest pace in decades, led by China, Russia and emerging markets like India and Turkey. The **euro** is the favored currency alternative; interest in China's **renminbi** is real but capped by capital controls and limited access.

## Not an abandonment

Crucially, this is **diversification, not desertion.** More than **80%** of central banks still say the dollar offers unmatched **safety and liquidity**, and most expect it to remain **above 50%** of global reserves a decade from now. The dollar still sits at the center of the system: by the **IMF's** data its share of allocated reserves was about **58%** at end-2024 — the lowest since 1994, but still dominant — and the greenback features in the vast majority of global currency trading. The change is **gradual and structural**, measured over years.

## Why it matters

For the **United States**, softer foreign demand for dollars and Treasuries could, over time, nudge **borrowing costs higher** — a slow-building headwind rather than a sudden shock. For **gold** and, to a lesser degree, the euro, it's a structural **tailwind**. And for the **global system**, it signals a move toward a more **multipolar** monetary order, where the dollar remains first among reserves but no longer nearly the only one that matters.

Boursel offers no forecast on the dollar's level or gold's price; the durable point is that the people who manage the world's official savings are, in aggregate and for the first time, **planning to lean away from the dollar** — slowly, deliberately, and toward gold above all.

## Sources

- [Global Public Investor 2026](https://www.omfif.org/global-public-investor-2026/)
- [For first time, more central banks set to shrink dollar holdings](https://finance.yahoo.com/economy/policy/articles/first-time-more-central-banks-050116391.html)