Reserve managers overwhelmingly reject digital assets

THAT the US will inevitably devalue or renege on its sovereign debt, probably through inflation and money-printing, found easy consensus at a recent private dinner for family offices and sovereign funds attended by the Official Monetary and Financial Institutions Forum (OMFIF).

A furious and intractable row broke out, however, about whether gold or Bitcoin was the better alternative to the US dollar, while the renminbi and the euro went unmentioned. If a reserve manager were also present it would perhaps have swung the argument.

OMFIF’s Global Public Investor (GPI) 2025 found that not a single central bank surveyed holds any digital assets, and 93 per cent have no intention of doing so. Of the institutions in question, representing US$5 trillion of global reserves, there were outliers in the Middle East plus a lone voice in Europe. The pronounced conservativism extended beyond distributed-ledger technology assets to the technology itself: 82 per cent of respondents neither use it nor intend to in future, even though some of their central bank digital currency teams are getting ready to do so.