Geopolitics risk-off · 3–10 years
A what‑if from the future

What if a major economy ditches the dollar for trade settlement?

A major economy fully abandoning dollar settlement is the largest reserve-flight shock in this set, so the long end sells hardest (30y +13bp) with gold (+3.4%) and bitcoin bid and DXY down — the unambiguous 'sell-Treasuries, buy-hard-assets' regime. Rhymes with the 1971 Nixon Shock and the post-2022 weaponization that accelerated reserve diversification. Forward angle: there is still no liquid alternative reserve asset at scale, so de-dollarization shows up first as term-premium and gold repricing rather than a disorderly UST collapse.

31%
our model probability
over 3–10 years
prediction markets — the market's odds
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Anchored to measured history 31% · 90% range 5–58% · 13 dated precedents behind it — a wider range means thinner evidence

Every number ships with its receipt — the odds, the range, the precedents, and a public grade at Reality Check. The statistical machinery that produces it is proprietary.

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 (electric blue) over time vs the market's (Polymarket, amber), 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. Loading the probability audit trail…

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What it would mean

If this plays out, it is a risk-off shock. A major economy abandons the dollar for trade settlement, accelerating de-dollarization. The trigger decomposes into signed root‑shocks — Dollar/reserve confidence ▼ — which propagate through our causal graph to the markets below.

Methodology. Probability and impact are anchored to history and scored against what actually happens — wins and losses, in public, at Reality Check. Market odds live from Polymarket & Kalshi. By Vikas Singh, Quantitative Strategist. Updated 2026-08-13.