What if a CBDC race fragments the global payment system?
A fragmenting CBDC race is a mild payment-rail shock, so the modeled move is a small dollar-confidence haircut — gold/bitcoin slightly bid, long end up a touch, with ETH softer as competing sovereign rails crowd it. Rhymes with the early e-CNY rollout and cross-border mBridge pilots that nudged settlement away from SWIFT at the margin. Forward angle: CBDCs threaten correspondent banking and stablecoins more than they threaten the dollar's reserve status, so the real loser is private payment intermediaries, not Treasuries.
how we built this number — every step
The class rate is measured from our dated, sourced event library (decade-normalized Poisson — the full table is public at base_rates.json). The variant’s share within its class is the analyst’s editorial call, published so you can audit it. A wider range means thinner precedent. Full recipe: methodology · scored at Reality Check.
The butterfly cascade
How this trigger trickles across markets, left → right — the root shock, its first‑order moves, then the ripple effects. Drag any node; tap a market for its real price history.
Resolution timeline — how this probability is moving
Our model's odds (gold) over time vs the crowd's (Polymarket, blue), from the past toward the 3–10 years horizon. Each dot is a real macro event that nudged the probability — green pushed it up, red pushed it down. Tap a dot for the source. The gold path is an illustrative reconstruction anchored to today's estimate — real dated events, not a live re-estimate history.
What it would mean
If this plays out, it is a risk-off shock. A central-bank-digital-currency race fragments the global payment and settlement system. The trigger decomposes into signed root‑shocks — Dollar/reserve confidence ▼ · Crypto confidence ▼ — which propagate through our causal graph to the markets below.
If it happens — the markets it would move
Biggest moves first. Projected moves are cascade-model priors; hist A–B% = what comparable past events actually did (measured abnormal returns), and model prior · unmeasured marks markets with no analogue backing yet. Tap any market for its price history.
| Market | Class | Projected move | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Gold XAUon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Commodity | ▲ +1.1% hist -0.62–+0.93% · other way +1.03% (n=12) |
| 2 | MicroStrategy MSTRon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Equity | ▲ +1.1% hist -0.27–+0.69% · other way -8.21% (n=12) |
| 3 | Bitcoin BTCon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Crypto | ▲ +0.6% hist -12.37–+1.74% · other way -5.09% (n=12) |
| 4 | US dollar (DXY) DXYon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | FX | ▼ -0.6% hist -0.45–-0.19% · other way -0.29% (n=12) |
| 5 | EUR/USD EURUSDon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | FX | ▲ +0.5% hist +0.17–+0.35% · other way +0.39% (n=12) |
| 6 | 30y Treasury yield DGS30 📈 chart | Rate | ▲ +4bp hist -2.67–+3.7% · other way -7.2% (n=12) |
| 7 | Coinbase COINon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Equity | ▲ +0.4% hist -0.85–+2.56% · other way -0.99% (n=12) |
| 8 | GBP/USD GBPUSDon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | FX | ▲ +0.4% hist -0.04–+0.26% · other way +0.05% (n=12) |
| 9 | 10y Treasury yield DGS10 📈 chart | Rate | ▲ +4bp hist -1.49–+3.49% · other way -10.0% (n=12) |
| 10 | Ether ETHon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Crypto | ▼ -0.3% hist -6.92–+1.88% · other way -7.55% (n=12) |
| 11 | Turkish lira TRY 📈 chart | FX | ▲ +0.4% hist +0.06–+0.42% · other way +0.02% (n=12) |
| 12 | Solana SOLon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Crypto | ▲ +0.3% hist -2.55–+0.39% · other way -16.24% (n=12) |
| 13 | Indian rupee INR 📈 chart | FX | ▲ +0.4% hist +0.1–+0.28% · other way -0.07% (n=12) |
| 14 | USD/JPY USDJPYon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | FX | ▼ -0.3% hist -0.29–+0.13% · other way -1.01% (n=12) |
Probable recommendation
Why we may diverge from history
Trust the cascade's SOL long: history's -10.5% is pure regime contamination — every analogue is an FTX/Alameda 2022 collapse window, an idiosyncratic crypto-credit blowup, not a payment-fragmentation read.
Historical precedent — what analogous events actually did
Across 40 analogous events (overlap‑weighted), as abnormal returns — market beta stripped, so it's the event's own effect, not the market backdrop. Shown at 20 days (persistent) and 5 days (immediate); ↺ fades = the two horizons disagree. Confidence = consistency × sample × significance.
| Asset | History says | Abnormal (20d · 5d) | Hit | n | Confidence | vs cascade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bitcoin BTC | SHORT | -10.2% · 5d -8.4% | 74% | 27 | 0.44 | ⚠ differs |
| SOL SOL | SHORT | -2.1% · 5d -11.4% | 75% | 20 | 0.42 | ⚠ differs |
| KRW KRW | SHORT | -0.3% · 5d +0.3% ↺ fades | 66% | 32 | 0.26 | ⚠ differs |
| SPX SPX | LONG | +1.0% · 5d -0.0% ↺ fades | 64% | 39 | 0.26 | ⚠ differs |
| Volatility VIX | LONG | +7.0% · 5d -0.5% ↺ fades | 65% | 34 | 0.26 | · |
| ETH ETH | SHORT | -6.1% · 5d -7.5% | 64% | 25 | 0.23 | ✓ matches cascade |
| MSTR MSTR | SHORT | -0.7% · 5d -5.0% | 61% | 33 | 0.18 | ⚠ differs |
| GBPUSD GBPUSD | SHORT | -0.2% · 5d +0.2% ↺ fades | 59% | 32 | 0.16 | ⚠ differs |
| TRY TRY | LONG | +0.2% · 5d +1.3% | 59% | 32 | 0.14 | ✓ matches cascade |
| Gold XAU | SHORT | -1.1% · 5d -1.0% | 56% | 32 | 0.11 | ⚠ differs |
| High-yield credit HYG | LONG | +0.0% · 5d +0.2% | 56% | 32 | 0.10 | · |
| 30y yield DGS30 | SHORT | -5bp · 5d -2bp | 55% | 38 | 0.09 | ⚠ differs |
| COIN COIN | LONG | +2.2% · 5d -2.5% ↺ fades | 55% | 20 | 0.08 | ✓ matches cascade |
| US dollar DXY | SHORT | -0.1% · 5d -0.2% | 44% | 39 | 0.00 | ✓ matches cascade |
Why this probability
CBDC race live (China e-CNY, others); some payment-rail fragmentation over a decade is likely. A base‑rate‑anchored prior, continuously scored against what actually happens — not a forecast.