Starting from 1816 which was the end of the Napoleonic Wars, UK pound sterling was the dominant reserve currency in the world. This lasted until the 1944 Bretton Woods conference which was the moment when the US dollar replaced pound sterling as the world reserve currency. In fact, replacement of the sterling by the dollar as the world leading reserve currency was a process that took 30 years from 1914 until 1944. The real turning point was the July to November 1914 when the financial panic caused by the start of the First World War led to the closure of the London and New York stock exchange and mad scramble around the world to obtain the gold to meet financial obligations. At first the United States was short of gold. The New York stock exchange was closed so Europeans could not sell US stocks and convert dollars into gold but within a few months massive US exports of cotton and other agricultural products to the UK produced huge trade surpluses. Gold begins to flow from Europe to the US. Wall Street begins to underwrite massive war loans for the UK and France. By the end of the First World War the US emerged as a major creditor and a major gold power. The dollar percentage of total global reserves began to soar drastically. Dollar was becoming stronger and stronger after the First World War. Actually the time from the end of the First World War to the beginning of the Second World War, the years 1918 to 1939 was the time when the world had 2 reserve currencies. Rising in power US dollar and weakening UK pound sterling. Finally in 1939 England suspended the gold shipments in order to finance fighting in World War Two and this drastically diminished the role of the UK pound as the reliable store of value. Replacement of the pound sterling as the world reserve currency was a process not an event. It was correlated with the growth of the US economy long before the First World War. The time between the wars was an inevitable transition from Pound to Dollar as the leading currency in the world.
Right now we can observe signs of the dollar slipping as the leading global reserve currency. In the year 2000 dollar assets were about 70% of global reserves. Today in 2021 dollars are at 62% of global reserve. If this trend continues we will eventually see this figure going under 50 % in the not so distant future, at the same time we have another power raising where all the gold is flowing in right now. In the years from 1914 until 1944 we had massive inflow of gold into the US. Right now we have a massive inflow of gold into China. Officially China reports that it has 1,054 metric tonnes of gold but that figure is from 2009 and since then China acquired huge amounts of gold without reporting it to the IMF or World Gold Council. You have to understand one important thing that China is not a free society. It is run by the communist party which is essentially a dictatorship so any data coming from China is probably not accurate and not reflecting the reality. China’s gold acquisition is not done in the formal way. It is happening by stealth acquisitions on the markets using intelligence and military assets, covert operations and market manipulations but the results are the same. Gold is flowing to China today the same as gold was flowing to the US before World War Two. China is not alone in the efforts of undermining the dollar as the world reserve currency. Russia has doubled its gold reserves in the past 5 years, Iran has also imported massive amounts of gold mostly through Turkey and Dubai. Then we have Brazil, India and another countries which would like to see the change in the world reserve currency. Pound sterling faced a single rival in 1914 just the US Dollar. Today the dollar is facing a bunch of rivals: China, Russia, India, Brazil etc… During the glory years of pound sterling the exchange value of the pound was extremely stable. In 2006 , the UK House of Commons produced a 255-year price index for pound sterling that covered the period from 1750 to 2005. The index had a value of 5.1 in 1751. There were fluctuations caused by the Napoleonic Wars and First World War but even as late as 1939 the index was at only 15.8 that means the prices had only tripled since 1751 but once the sterling lost its reserve currency role to the dollar inflation exploded. The index hit 757 by 2005. In other words during the 255 years the measuring index increased by 200% in the first 185 years but it went up 5000% in the years from 1935 to 2005. Price stability seems to be a norm for money with reserve currency status but since that status is lost inflation comes in the huge volume. Decline of the dollar as the reserve currency started in 1933 when President Roosevelt dropped the gold standard. The United States had been on a gold standard since 1879, except for an embargo on gold exports during World War I then we had a year 2000 when the Euro was created to counterbalance domination of the dollar around the world. The decline of the dollar is amplified by China emerging as a major creditor and gold power.
If you are waiting for the sudden and spontaneous collapse of the dollar you may be missing the point. The dollar collapse has already begun and it will be a slow process not a spectacular event. What’s important for you right now is to acquire insurance so when this process accelerates your portfolio won’t be affected.