The US dollar's dominance as the world's reserve currency is deeply entrenched. IMF COFER data shows the dollar holds approximately 58% of global foreign exchange reserves as of late 2025. Reserve currencies require deep liquidity, price stability, and universal acceptance — qualities Bitcoin currently lacks due to its extreme volatility, which MUFG Research highlights as a fundamental barrier to functioning as a reliable store of value.
No central bank in the world currently holds Bitcoin as part of its official reserves. Economist Kenneth Rogoff, writing for Interest.co.nz, acknowledged that while geopolitical pressures and dollar weaponization create some long-term uncertainty, Bitcoin displacing the dollar is "not going to happen anytime soon." Even VanEck's relatively bullish analysis frames Bitcoin's potential role in terms of offsetting a portion of US national debt — not replacing the dollar as the global reserve currency.
The only source that entertains Bitcoin achieving reserve-currency primacy is Binance Research, which has a direct financial conflict of interest as a crypto exchange. Even that analysis places the "earliest plausible window" at 2046, contingent on multiple sequential conditions that remain unmet. Treating this speculative scenario as a mainstream "expectation" is a clear misrepresentation of the evidence.