What if a Western bloc cuts Chinese banks off from SWIFT?
SWIFT expulsion of major Chinese banks forces abrupt CIPS rerouting; the clearest move is the long-end Treasury back-up as Beijing's reserve managers slow UST buying and dollar-clearing trust frays, with gold and BTC bid as non-sovereign hedges. Rhymes with the 2022 Russia reserve freeze, which durably lifted gold and accelerated de-dollarization talk. China funds the US deficit and runs the world's export plumbing; a forced split raises every cross-border importer's settlement cost. Novel angle: CIPS is now deep enough that fragmentation, not collapse, is the base case — long-end term premium, not a USD crash.
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 6–18 months 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 bloc expels several Chinese banks from SWIFT over sanctions evasion, accelerating CIPS adoption and payment fragmentation. The trigger decomposes into signed root‑shocks — Credit spreads ▲ · Dollar/reserve confidence ▼ · Trade tension ▲ — 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 | Nasdaq 100 NDXon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Index | ▼ -3.0% hist -2.37–-0.9% · other way +0.06% (n=12) |
| 2 | Semiconductors SMHon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Equity | ▼ -2.7% hist -1.44–+0.79% · other way +2.75% (n=12) |
| 3 | MicroStrategy MSTRon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Equity | ▲ +2.7% hist -2.48–+1.99% · other way +27.47% (n=12) |
| 4 | Nvidia NVDAon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Equity | ▼ -2.4% hist -2.38–+2.35% · other way +3.35% (n=12) |
| 5 | Gold XAUon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Commodity | ▲ +2.1% hist +0.44–+1.8% · other way +0.37% (n=12) |
| 6 | TSMC TSMon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Equity | ▼ -2.3% hist -1.51–-0.34% · other way +3.69% (n=12) |
| 7 | Tech sector XLK 📈 chart | Equity | ▼ -2.1% hist -1.45–-0.34% · other way +0.09% (n=12) |
| 8 | AMD AMDon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Equity | ▼ -1.9% hist -1.79–+0.68% · other way -1.07% (n=12) |
| 9 | Broadcom AVGOon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Equity | ▼ -1.9% hist -1.24–+3.65% · other way +2.63% (n=12) |
| 10 | Micron MUon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Equity | ▼ -1.9% hist -1.52–+0.45% · other way +5.79% (n=12) |
| 11 | Marvell MRVLon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Equity | ▼ -1.9% hist -1.74–-0.26% · other way +2.53% (n=12) |
| 12 | Alibaba BABAon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Equity | ▼ -1.7% hist -1.88–+0.17% · other way -3.18% (n=11) |
| 13 | ASML ASMLon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Equity | ▼ -1.7% hist -2.39–+0.03% · other way -0.63% (n=12) |
| 14 | Bitcoin BTCon Hyperliquid 📈 chart | Crypto | ▲ +1.5% hist -3.76–+2.79% · other way +6.05% (n=11) |
Probable recommendation
Why we may diverge from history
Trust the cascade's XLK/NDX short: the +2.5% history is regime-contaminated by 2023 bank-rescue and 2025 tariff snapbacks where tech V-rallied; a SWIFT-led payment freeze is a different, on-channel shock.
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| KRW KRW | SHORT | -1.6% · 5d -0.1% | 70% | 31 | 0.40 | ⚠ differs |
| AVGO AVGO | LONG | +3.7% · 5d -0.7% ↺ fades | 70% | 24 | 0.38 | ⚠ differs |
| High-yield credit HYG | SHORT | -0.7% · 5d -0.2% | 69% | 30 | 0.32 | ✓ matches cascade |
| XCU XCU | SHORT | -2.5% · 5d -1.0% | 68% | 32 | 0.32 | ✓ matches cascade |
| MRVL MRVL | SHORT | -0.8% · 5d -3.1% | 68% | 32 | 0.29 | ✓ matches cascade |
| SPX SPX | LONG | +0.5% · 5d +0.2% | 66% | 38 | 0.29 | ⚠ differs |
| ETH ETH | SHORT | -4.2% · 5d -4.9% | 70% | 14 | 0.28 | ⚠ differs |
| SMH SMH | LONG | +1.7% · 5d -0.9% ↺ fades | 64% | 32 | 0.24 | ⚠ differs |
| JPM JPM | SHORT | -0.2% · 5d -1.6% | 62% | 36 | 0.22 | ✓ matches cascade |
| MSTR MSTR | SHORT | -3.4% · 5d -3.0% | 62% | 32 | 0.20 | ⚠ differs |
| Bitcoin BTC | SHORT | -4.6% · 5d -3.1% | 62% | 16 | 0.19 | ⚠ differs |
| XLF XLF | SHORT | -0.5% · 5d -1.1% | 59% | 32 | 0.17 | ✓ matches cascade |
| FCX FCX | SHORT | -1.6% · 5d -0.9% | 59% | 32 | 0.16 | ✓ matches cascade |
| 30y yield DGS30 | SHORT | -7bp · 5d -3bp | 58% | 37 | 0.14 | ⚠ differs |
Why this probability
Full SWIFT expulsion of Chinese banks is near-unprecedented; bloc-wide consensus and escalation costs make it rare. A base‑rate‑anchored prior, continuously scored against what actually happens — not a forecast.