Dollar-denominated reserves - ie central bank holdings - adjusted for valuation effects are now lower than gold reserves for the first time since the International Monetary Fund started publishing the data in the late 1990s.

Unadjusted dollar reserves then come to about $4 trillion, barely half the $7.5 trillion for the unadjusted measure reported by the IMF, which includes the interest earned on them (I use the Bloomberg US Treasury Index and take its return out of the unadjusted number). The IMF-reported amount is real, but it doesn’t capture active demand.

The same argument can be leveled at gold. Holdings of central banks could simply be passively benefiting from the metal’s historic rise in recent years. But if we consider the adjusted value of dollar reserves as the currency’s “weight,” then it has fallen 15% since official holdings of the US currency peaked around 2014. Whereas (almost exclusively emerging markets) central banks have increased their physical holdings of bullion, in tons, by 15%. It’s thus hard to refute that actual demand for dollars has been materially softening.