Jim Rickards - Russia, China Creating a Bypass System to the US Dollar?

In his latest interview with Alex Stanczyk, Jim Rickards describes ongoing efforts by Russia and China to create a bypass system to the US dollar. You can hear Jim detail how this might function starting at around the 23 minute mark of the video through the 30:20 minute mark.

Below I have embedded the video and pasted in the list of topics discussed. Below that are a few added comments.

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Topics Include:
*Implications of the USMCA between the US, Canada, and Mexico *The importance of Robert Lighthizer’s role in US trade negotiations *Update on tensions between Russia and Ukraine *Russia’s “buffer states” of outlying countries *How Russia’s gas pipelines running through Ukraine are critical infrastructure
*Why Russia purchasing close to 30 tons of gold per month is a strategic move (23 minute mark)
*How a decentralized permissioned ledger cryptocurrency sponsored by Russia and or China and settled in physical gold could be the next system used by sovereigns to settle net trade balances without using the US dollar
*Why Switzerland could be an ideal location to settle net payments in gold *Update on Saudi Arabia stability, succession, and world relations *Thoughts on the G20 upcoming meetings and trade negotiations *Update on Fed monetary policy and interest rates

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My added comments: This information from Jim Rickards is interesting and fits in somewhat with we understand here. It does not appear that any major western central banks or the IMF are close to implementing any kind of blockchain based "digital currency" or central bank digital currency (CBDC) unless you view the possible attempt by Sweden in 2019 as an effort by a major central bank. Of course that would just be for their own national currency.

With this in mind, we also know that Russia, China, and the other BRICS nations have been working on ways to try and bypass using the US dollar for a variety of reasons despite somewhat limited success thus far. So, the system Jim describes here does make sense. If the IMF is not ready to try and go forward with a "e-SDR" as a possible substitute for the US dollar any time soon, we would certainly expect that these nations would move forward on their own to try and figure out ways around the US dollar and SWIFT based system.

This is a legitimate potential disruption to the present monetary system to keep an eye on in our view here. Another different one is the Kinesis project that will attempt to launch in the spring of 2019 and will be based on stable coins tied directly to physical gold and silver. That project continues to move forward slowly but surely, but won't attempt to go live until May of 2019 according to their current timeline.

We'll continue to monitor events and watch for any potential disruptive events to the present monetary system even as we have nothing to report right now that anything is on the near term horizon. (note: Jim does suggest that the system he describes in the video might be able to function within the next twelve months).