Europe Just Bragged About Losing to Gold
Europe Just Bragged About Losing to Gold
Notes From the Field By James Hickman (Simon Black / Sovereign Man) June 4, 2026
When the euro launched on January 1, 1999, it was sold as the future. It would be a single currency to knit Europe together — to wipe out the exchange-rate friction between member states, complete the continent's single market, and bind a dozen squabbling nations into one economic bloc with one money.
And in the grander ambitions of its architects, it was meant to do something more: to grow up into a true global currency, the first serious rival the US dollar had faced since World War II.
Last week, the European Central Bank published its 2025 report card, with ECB President Christine Lagarde celebrating “an opening for the euro to enhance its global appeal.”
The report bragged that the euro remains the second most used currency in the world, as well as the second most held in reserve, behind only the dollar.
The key word is “currency.”
Because in reality, 2025 was the year that gold took the top spot, making up 27% of global reserves held by governments and central banks. That pushed US Treasuries into second place with 22%, and the euro into third, making up 15% of global reserves.
A metal that pays no interest and earns no yield is now the biggest slice of global reserves, up from just 20% a year earlier.
The world is, in fact, trying to diversify away from the dollar. Central banks have spent years quietly trimming their dollar exposure, looking for somewhere safer to park their national savings.
But they are not choosing euros.
Then why, the ECB may counter, was 2025 a record year for international borrowing in euros?
Because there is more debt in everything than ever — global debt keeps smashing new highs, so a record pile of euro IOUs is less an achievement than a symptom of the times.
But to give credit where it's due, the euro is genuinely in first place in one market, according to Lagarde: "The euro became the leading currency in the green and sustainable international bond market."
That's the debt Europe sells to bankroll the very net-zero crusade that gutted its own economy. So the euro's crowning achievement of 2025 was becoming the world champion at borrowing money to make itself poorer.
If you ever needed one sentence to explain why nobody wants this currency, there it is.
Because leading the world in the things that make you poorer is the entire European model. Across the continent, governments spent two decades waging war on their own cheap energy in the name of net zero — turning their backs on nuclear power that supplied a third of Europe's electricity in 1990 and barely 15% today.
They saddled themselves with some of the highest power prices in the developed world and watched their industry pack up and leave. They threw open their borders, then aimed their police and courts at the citizens who objected.
The result is a continent so hollowed out that Mississippi, the poorest state in America, now produces more wealth per person than France or Italy.
But sure, this is the euro’s moment...
Meanwhile, central banks added roughly 850 tonnes of physical gold in 2025, a slight step down from the record-shattering pace of the prior two years, but bought at the highest prices in human history.
Poland led the gold-buying pack last year, followed by China, Turkey, and India.
But for a stretch of 2025, the single biggest gold buyer on the planet wasn't a country at all — it was Tether, the company behind the world's biggest dollar-backed stablecoin.
In the third quarter alone it bought more gold than any central bank on earth, and by the end of January it was sitting on roughly 148 tonnes — nearly 4.8 million ounces, worth about $22 billion — enough to rank among the top 30 gold holders in the world, ahead of the likes of Australia and South Korea.
This is exactly why the gold story is far from over.
The extra gold central banks have bought since 2022 laid the foundation for a price that has nearly tripled since — yet even that represents only a modest reallocation out of US dollars.
So what happens when they move even another 5% of their $10 trillion in reserves into gold?
With no single currency able to replace the dollar, and the reasons to diversify only growing, gold looks set to keep climbing as the world's largest reserve asset.
To your freedom, James Hickman Co-Founder, Schiff Sovereign LLC
P.S. Everyone from central banks to a stablecoin giant is racing into gold — which is why it's trading near record highs. We think owning the companies that produce it beats buying bullion at the top.
That's the whole idea behind Strategic Assets, Schiff Sovereign's monthly investment research. We hunt for profitable real-asset businesses with clean balance sheets, real catalysts, and a low multiple of free cash flow.
And it's working. We've seen it multiply the value of several precious metals companies, with others still in the buy range today. The same setup is now lining up well beyond the metals — in energy and other real assets — as nations around the world scramble to secure the critical resources a fragmenting world runs on.