The share of the U.S. dollar in countries' foreign exchange reserves has fallen, but an analysis said it is excessive to interpret this as a global "de-dollarization" trend.
According to Bloomberg News on the 7th (local time), Linda Goldberg and Sneha Parthasarthy, researchers at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, noted in a recent blog post that the decline in the dollar's share does not show a broad redistribution of currency by countries around the world. They said moves by a few countries may have had a large impact on the aggregate statistics.
The dollar's share of global foreign exchange reserves fell to 56% in 2025 from 64% in 2015. The figure is often cited as grounds for the claim that the dollar's reserve currency status is weakening.
However, according to the researchers' analysis, most of the foreign exchange reserves that actively switched dollar asset holdings into other currency from 2015 to 2019 came from China and Russia. From 2019 to 2023, China, Russia, Mexico and Morocco led the decline in the dollar's share.
Among the remaining countries, the numbers that increased and decreased dollar holdings have been almost the same since 2015.
The researchers said, "There is little evidence that the dollar's share in foreign exchange reserves is decreasing across countries," adding, "When a few major countries move in a concentrated way, it can look like a global trend in aggregate statistics."
The researchers also analyzed that the reasons countries convert foreign exchange reserves into currencies other than the dollar vary. They said the objectives of managing foreign exchange reserves by country—such as securing liquidity, managing exchange rates, and preparing for funding shocks—affect currency composition.
The researchers said, "These factors are still acting strongly," and noted, "Changes in the currency shares of foreign exchange reserves show cyclical movement according to countries' management needs rather than systematic de-dollarization."
However, another study released in Jun. found that most of the world's Central Bank plan to reduce the share of dollar asset over the long term.