For most of modern history, the machinery that moves money globally has been almost invisible. You bought something; money moved and banks settled it. Few people thought much about the financial architecture making this possible.
This writer observed these changes years ago as co-founder and CEO of the American Blockchain PAC, where their mission centered on bringing regulatory clarity to America’s emerging digital-asset industry and helping policymakers address a fundamental question: What exactly are these new assets, and how should the United States regulate them?
At that time, much of Washington treated digital assets as a regulatory problem. Today, they increasingly appear as a geopolitical one.
The next great contest for global power may not be over which currency replaces the dollar but over something far less glamorous yet potentially equally consequential: who controls the rails on which the world’s money moves.
The U.S. dollar remains overwhelmingly dominant. According to the Bank for International Settlements, approximately 98% of stablecoin value is still denominated in dollars. The dollar remains deeply embedded in global finance.
However, countries increasingly seek the ability to move money without passing through infrastructure vulnerable to American or Western control. Russia offers perhaps the most provocative example of this.
In a recent interview, PSB Bank Chairman Petr Fradkov described payments as a tool of “new warfare,” arguing that the dollar’s power extends beyond the currency itself to America’s influence over transactions.
You do not need to accept Moscow’s framing or sympathize with its motives to recognize the larger point: money is power. But so too is the ability to determine how, where, and whether money moves.
Consider A7A5, the ruble-backed stablecoin launched in 2025. It has reportedly generated nearly $140 billion in cumulative turnover, making it the world’s largest non-dollar stablecoin. Western governments have sanctioned entities associated with A7A5, and critics argue that the broader A7 network is explicitly designed to help Russia circumvent sanctions.
This is precisely why Washington should be paying attention.
Sanctions work because America does not merely issue the world’s dominant currency; it also sits at the center of much of the machinery that moves money around the world. A dollar transaction between two foreign countries can still touch correspondent banks, clearing systems, and regulated financial institutions within America’s reach.
This gives Washington an enormous advantage: the ability to see transactions, block them, and in some cases, effectively shut institutions out of the global financial system.
For decades, there were few practical ways around this architecture. Now there are.
China has expanded its Cross-Border Interbank Payment System (CIPS), which provides infrastructure for renminbi transactions. Governments worldwide are experimenting with central bank digital currencies, tokenized deposits, and stablecoins. Russia is pushing A7 internationally, including into Africa.
These systems do not need to defeat the dollar to matter. They merely have to make Western financial infrastructure optional.
This may be the geopolitical story Washington is missing.
The debate often centers on “de-dollarization”: Will China replace the dollar with the yuan? Will BRICS create a common currency? Will some new digital asset knock the greenback from its throne?
Those questions might be looking in the wrong direction.
The more immediate competition is over infrastructure, not currency. Imagine the dollar remains the world’s preferred store of value but a growing percentage of international commerce moves across settlement networks Washington cannot easily monitor, interrupt, or influence.
America could retain monetary dominance while gradually losing some of the geopolitical leverage that monetary dominance once automatically provided.
Alternative payment rails can reduce American visibility into international transactions, make sanctions harder to enforce, and weaken the network effects that make U.S.-centered financial infrastructure indispensable.
Dollar-backed stablecoins themselves currently strengthen the dollar because their value is pegged to it, extending the dollar’s reach into the digital economy. Nearly the entire stablecoin market is dollar-denominated, and major issuers hold enormous quantities of U.S. Treasury securities.
Digital finance has exported the dollar rather than displaced it. This gives Washington an extraordinary advantage but not necessarily a permanent one.
Countries across Asia, Africa, and Latin America increasingly seek what might be called financial optionality: the ability to trade globally without depending exclusively on infrastructure controlled elsewhere.
For America, the answer is not to stop technological competition. It means making dollar-based digital infrastructure faster, cheaper, and easier to use. It also means regulatory clarity for American stablecoins and tokenized finance and treating payment technology as strategic infrastructure rather than an obscure corner of financial regulation.
America spent decades building the world’s most powerful financial system. Its next challenge is ensuring the rest of the world still wants to use it.
The battle for the future of money may not ultimately be about whose face is printed on the currency. It may be about who owns the rails—and the terrain beneath them.
