Remember about 15 years ago, when gold suddenly made a major price jump around 2007 and never came back down? That was de-Dollarization at work. I'm old enough to remember the phrase "this is very good for gold" before "this is very good for Bitcoin" came along, and if you were around in 2006 you are too ;)
http://news.goldseek.com/GoldForecaster/1147791900.php
Boring macro-economics and politics aside, long story short; Certain countries realized by holding on to the United States non-gold backed Dollar, they are
A) helping them to maintain their currency's value: Since a Dollar backed by nothing can only retain it's value based on supply and demand, and making yourself the international reserve (other countries around the world holding your currency in their central bank) is the best possible way to print endless bills yet not lose any value.
B) Exposing themselves to sanctions and at the same time putting themselves at risk when a Dollar collapse comes
and last but not least C) Enabling their war machine: Though the exact reasons for Russia to start doing this in 2006 aren't to be answered in a single reason, many say the 2003 Iraq war was a major, major contributor.
Let's compare Russia's gold reserves the past decades to that of the gold price
Can you just imagine someday having charts of a nation's Bitcoin reserves :) But, we're getting way ahead of ourselves here. Bottom line is when major macro-economic changes occur for a nation, alternatives to foreign fiat money are a very, very attractive option. Now where gold shines and Bitcoin fails is the durability issue. Case in point; There was no Bitcoin to even consider exchanging your Dollars for back in 2006/7. The whole point was to not only lessen dependency of the Dollar, but to of course also ensure your assets be equally, if not even better protected from loss of value. Though Bitcoin is maturing every single year and El Salvador was the first nation to recognize it as legal tender, we are still only at the starting lines for Bitcoin becoming equivalent to gold in this aspect. But now El Salvador did take a major step, what will the rest of the world do? Let's relate this to what other countries did when Russia started to turn to gold. What has the rest of the world done since? Are they ignoring this trend and pretending it didn't happen and instead write countless distractive boogeyman "news"reports about Russia ever since 2007? Well, yes and no.
https://www.rt.com/business/526265-cuba-suspends-dollars-us-sanctions/
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2006/2/14/syria-picks-euros-over-dollars
https://news-logics.com/cuba-advises-tourists-to-visit-island-without-cash-dollars/
https://www.asiafinancial.com/iran-dumps-dollar-for-yuan
Diversification is the key word. Some are turning to the Yuan, some to other countries' currencies for bilateral trade, but the interesting point is that they are continuously moving away from the Dollar and looking for other options, and the more Bitcoin proves itself, the more realistic the chances become for other countries to take similar steps as El Salvador. Though the countries I'd hoped to be embracing both gold and Bitcoin (e.g. China, Iran) have sort of done the opposite, but this could be a temporary thing as both do seem to be positive on the blockchain technology itself. The possibility of them turning to Crypto to hold as an asset could be a realistic possibility in the future as ongoing de-Dollarization *is an actual thing*. This can clearly be seen by the trendsetter doubling down on their bet in recent years.
https://www.rt.com/russia/525569-dollar-wealth-fund-currency/
https://thedeepdive.ca/russia-dumps-5-billion-from-oil-fund-embraces-euro-yuan-instead/
Now, to be fair, Russia was not the first country to do so, but certainly the first most powerful, both militarily and economically. As some might remember Iraq took similar steps in 2002, which some claim was the main reason for the war when Saddam switched Iraqi accounts and oil payments to the Euro,
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2003/feb/16/iraq.theeuro
but if so, then why would Euro-nations join in on the Iraq war on behalf of the Dollar if that was really the case? But then again on the other hand, the 2 most powerful Euro-nations France and Germany, did not join in and guess who they created an alliance with to form a united front:
