Why Hasn't The Dollar Fallen? | Lessons from Currency Historian Barry Eichengreen

Bankless

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4.7 • 1.2K Ratings

🗓️ 16 April 2026

⏱️ 77 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Why has the dollar remained dominant despite rising debt, geopolitical strain, and growing challengers? Barry Eichengreen joins Bankless to trace the history of global reserve currencies. From Spanish silver and the Byzantine solidus to sterling and the modern dollar, Barry explains the conditions that make a currency rise, endure, and eventually fall. We explore fiscal discipline, rule of law, military power, gold, China, and crypto to understand what history suggests about the dollar’s future. ------ 📣SPOTIFY PREMIUM RSS FEED | USE CODE: SPOTIFY24 https://bankless.cc/spotify-premium ------ 🔮POLYMARKET | #1 PREDICTION MARKET https://bankless.cc/polymarket-podcast 🪐GALAXYONE | SOLANA STAKING https://bankless.cc/GalaxyOne 🦊 METAMASK | DOWNLOAD NOW https://go.metamask.io/BL-Pod-Download 🏅BITGET TRADFI | TRADE GOLD WITH USDT https://bankless.cc/bitget 🎯THE DEFI REPORT | ONCHAIN INSIGHTS https://thedefireport.io/bankless 🌐BRIX | EMERGING MARKET YIELD https://bankless.cc/brix ------ TIMESTAMPS 0:00 Intro 5:11 Spanish Pieces of ape 14:58 Solidus 18:56 International Currency Status 29:32 The Fall of International Currencies 33:27 The Fall of The US Dollar 41:38 What’s Special about the Dollar? 47:39 Theoretical Currencies 51:09 US Dollar Dominance Consequences 59:39 When will the Dollar Fall? 1:03:09 US Dollar Competitors 1:08:32 Gold 1:14:08 Bitcoin & Crypto 1:18:23 Closing & Disclaimers ------ RESOURCES Barry Eichengreen https://x.com/B_Eichengreen Money Beyond Borders: Global Currencies from Croesus to Crypto https://www.amazon.com/Money-Beyond-Borders-Currencies-Croesus/dp/0691280533 ------ Not financial or tax advice. See our investment disclosures here: https://www.bankless.com/disclosures⁠

Transcript

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0:00.0	I think we are seeing the beginnings of the decline of the dollar as a global currency,
0:06.9	as central banks are trying to hedge their bets, moving out of dollar U.S. Treasury securities
0:14.2	into gold and other non-traditional reserve currencies.
0:19.7	The analogy I sometimes use is like an iceberg, which
0:23.8	melts very solely until a whole chunk, big chunks, carve off all at once. So that's kind of
0:31.9	the scenario I imagine.
0:40.9	Bankless Nation, very excited to introduce you to Barry Eichen Green.
0:46.0	He has spent 40 years studying how dominant currencies rise and fall in his new book,
0:47.5	which is fantastic, by the way.
0:48.6	Money Beyond Borders.
0:52.3	It traces the full arc from Cresis to crypto.
0:55.4	I'm not sure we're going to get all the way back to Cresis, but Barry, welcome to Bankless. It's great to have you. So I don't know if you collect coins,
1:00.4	but I got to tell you, I used to as a child, and your book made me want to collect more.
1:07.3	So I had to start a question, of all of the currencies you talk about in your book, which is the one you would most like to own right now?
1:14.0	Which one would you like to buy?
1:15.8	Do you think somebody's answer might be, oh, I'd love to own the U.S. dollar?
1:20.1	Or is there just an incompatibility?
1:23.5	No, I think it's quite possible people will be looking back nostalgically at the dollar 500
1:30.2	years from now. Another fact I was reminded by in the course of writing the book is that the
1:37.8	dollar hasn't been the dominant currency in the United States for the entirety of this country's history. So Alexander Hamilton
1:47.3	famously created the U.S. Mintz in the early 1890s, but there was such a shortage of
1:54.7	gold and silver in the country before the California gold rush and the Nevada.
	...

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