Brics nations are exploring gold-backed digital tokens to reduce reliance on the US dollar, using electronic representations of gold to enable faster, more secure international trade without physically moving gold.
(Photo: Unpslash) 
The irony of returning currencies to a majority gold-backed digital token is that it begins with decoupling. Because we can’t turn gold bars into electrons and transmit them across the internet, the value of the gold needs to be separated from the actual gold, so that you don’t need to courier Krugerrands every time you buy a burger.
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There are two frontrunning proposed solutions. One is a fractal monetary ecosystem (not to be confused with a CBDC) called Unit, which will act as a settlement asset underpinned by 40% gold and 60% in BRICS member state currencies.
The other option comes from a World Gold Council (WGC) research report that proposes a Standard Gold Unit (SGU) value token that allows for a universal unit of exchange.
But with all this gold talk, what about the dollar?
By design, not decree
Eshmael Mpabanga, the country head of Intellect Design Arena, argues that successful de-dollarisation is an infrastructure challenge, not just a policy decision.
“You can’t de-dollarise by decree... You need to do it by design,” he said.
The seasoned banker told Daily Maverick that for BRICS de-dollarisation to be sustainable, nations must “re-engineer their financial infrastructure around three pillars: interoperability, liquidity and trust”.
He described banking infrastructure as the “circulatory system of our economy”, moving money like arteries move blood, and critiqued current efforts as merely putting “digital layers” (apps, Application Programming Interfaces) on top of legacy foundations designed for batch processing. “You can’t run a 21st-century economy on 20th-century plumbing,” he said.
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Pressed for an example of this circulatory system, Mpabanga pointed out that BRICS transactions often flow through US correspondent banks.
He argued that a “regional liquidity framework” was a secondary requirement to clarify local settlement flows and mutual credit agreements before a truly open economy could be built.
Breaking beyond the dollar
To successfully leave the dollar, you essentially need to invent … a dollar.
Global trade requires a unit of account that is stable, liquid and universally trusted. Currently, the US dollar is the only asset that fits that bill.
A July 2025 report by JP Morgan puts a fine point on this specific friction. The bank’s analysts wrote that while countries are pursuing “payments sovereignty” to build infrastructure separate from the West, they hit a hard wall when it comes to holding reserves.
“The reluctance of countries to hold large quantities of foreign currencies other than the dollar and euro leads to a more intractable issue — the absence of a universally accepted settlement and reserve asset,” states the report.
We have already seen this movie play out in the energy sector. When Russia began selling oil to India in rupees to bypass sanctions, it hit a wall. Russia ended up with billions of trapped rupees it couldn’t spend because the currency isn’t widely accepted elsewhere.
This is the “intractable issue” JP Morgan warns about: you can’t buy a semiconductor from China with a trapped rupee from India.
What this means for you
For now, this is about trade power, not your wallet. You won’t be paid in gold tokens and the rand isn’t going anywhere. But if BRICS countries start settling trade in gold-anchored digital units instead of dollars, South Africa becomes less exposed to US interest rate shocks and dollar shortages — the kind that push up fuel prices and imported inflation at home.
Longer term, this is a strategic opportunity. If South Africa positions itself as trusted financial plumbing in a BRICS system (a settlement hub, clearing node or gold custodian) it strengthens the local banking sector and keeps the country relevant in global trade. Miss it, and we remain rule-takers in a system that is quietly being redesigned without us.
A golden circuit breaker
This is where the Unit and the WGC’s digital innovations try to square the circle. They won’t try to replace the dollar with another fiat currency, but with a synthetic asset that behaves like a stablecoin but is anchored in something the US Treasury cannot print: gold.
Katherine Kirkpatrick Bos, general counsel at StarkWare (an Israeli software company specialising in cryptography and zero-trust systems), said in the WGC report that the rise of stablecoins was “a little bit of a gateway drug that enables institutions to diversify safely into crypto”.
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This suggests stablecoins and tokenised assets like the split reserve Unit may serve as the transitional vehicle for traditional finance to enter these new systems.
By anchoring the Unit 40% in physical gold and 60% in BRICS currencies, the system creates an internal shock absorber. Gold has historically dampened the volatility of the softer fiat currencies in the basket.
So instead of Russia accepting volatile rupees for oil, they would accept Units. Because it holds its value better than any single BRICS currency, it creates a neutral, stable middle ground for moving money.
Insulation plumbing
How does this insulate the bloc from economic attacks? The answer lies in that fractal architecture, and the plumbing Mpabanga hinted at.
While the JP Morgan analysts concur that the Unit is “perhaps the most thoroughly fleshed-out of the de-dollarisation proposals” circulating in the BRICS Business Council, their research suggests that a multi-Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) platform is “a more likely disruptor” than a common BRICS currency.
They point to the Project mBridge pilot involving China, Thailand, the UAE and Hong Kong, which has “demonstrated the viability of a multi-CBDC platform to facilitate cross-border payments”.
These CBDCs allow nations to keep control of their domestic money supply while using a shared digital ledger to swap assets instantly.
Read more: Can the IMF’s “hoard of gold” help to alleviate Africa’s mounting debt woes?
Trust over technology
Ultimately, the barrier isn’t technology. Whether it is the fractal gold-backed architecture of the Unit or the mBridge ledger, the code works.
The Unit model proposes a decentralised network of nodes: a central bank in Brazil or a clearing house in South Africa could act as a node, holding the physical gold and local currency reserves in their vaults. The digital token represents the value of those locally held assets.
It’s a bold gamble. It relies on political will and a level of trust between BRICS nations that has historically been scarce. But if they can fix the plumbing, they might just solve the paradox. DM