Originally published 2021-01-19.
In January 2021, Stephen Harper, who led Canada as prime minister from 2006 to 2015, said he expected the list of assets that countries keep in reserve to grow, and he named gold and Bitcoin among the possible additions. He did not predict that Bitcoin would replace the US dollar. His view was the opposite: the dollar would stay dominant, with a wider "basket" of other holdings growing slowly around it.
That distinction matters, because the comments were widely shared under headlines suggesting a former G7 leader had backed Bitcoin as the next world currency. Here is what he actually said, what a reserve currency is, and how the debate has moved since then.
What Harper said, and where
Harper spoke on 17 January 2021 in an interview with Jay Martin of the investment media company Cambridge House, recorded for the Vancouver Resource Investment Conference, which was held online that year. Asked about the future of the dollar, he argued that its only realistic rivals would be other very large currencies, namely the euro or the Chinese yuan, and that he doubted either could take its place.
"It's hard to see what the alternative is to the U.S. dollar as the world's major reserve currency," he told Martin, according to Cointelegraph's report of the interview. He then listed gold, Bitcoin and "a whole basket of things" as assets that might take a larger share of reserves over time, adding: "I think you'll see the number of things that people use as reserves will expand, but the U.S. dollar will still be the bulk of it."
So the headline claim is narrower than it first sounds. Harper described Bitcoin as one possible minor reserve asset, in a world still built on the dollar.
What a reserve currency actually is
A reserve currency is foreign money that governments and central banks hold in their foreign exchange reserves. Countries keep these reserves to pay for imports, service foreign debt, defend their own exchange rate in a crisis, and reassure investors that they can meet obligations abroad.
The dollar has held the top position since the Second World War. Before that, the British pound was the leading reserve currency through the 19th and early 20th centuries, and gold was the main reserve asset of all. The 1944 Bretton Woods agreement tied other currencies to the dollar and the dollar to gold. When President Richard Nixon ended dollar-to-gold convertibility in 1971, the world moved to a fully paper-money reserve system, yet the dollar kept its lead.
It still does. According to International Monetary Fund data summarised on Wikipedia's reserve currency page, the dollar made up about 57% of allocated global reserves in 2025, the euro about 20% and the Chinese renminbi only around 2%. The dollar's share has drifted down over two decades, but no single rival has come close.
Why gold keeps coming up
Gold never fully left central bank vaults after the gold standard ended. It cannot be printed, carries no credit risk tied to another government, and has a long record as a store of value. That is why Harper grouped Bitcoin with gold: supporters often call Bitcoin "digital gold" because its supply is capped by its software at 21 million coins.
Harper's worry about central bank digital money
The more cautious part of the interview concerned central bank digital currencies (CBDCs), which are digital versions of a national currency issued by the central bank itself, not by a private network like Bitcoin.
Harper treated some form of CBDC as close to inevitable. If digital money simply helps a central bank do its traditional job of keeping prices stable, he said, it is a natural step in how markets evolve. His concern was a central bank that drifts into acting as a general bank for everyone. If digital currencies became part of what he called "wild experiments as to the role of central banking", he said, that would worry him a great deal.
That is a recognisable conservative position: open to new technology, sceptical of expanding state power over everyday payments.
China's digital yuan
The interview came while China was testing the world's most advanced large-scale CBDC. The People's Bank of China began researching the idea in 2014, announced its Digital Currency Electronic Payment project (DCEP) in 2019, and launched pilots in April 2020 in Shenzhen, Suzhou, Chengdu and Xiong'an. The currency is now usually called the e-CNY or digital renminbi, and it has the same value as cash.
At the time, some commentators speculated that the digital yuan could help China's currency go global. In a 2020 BBC News report, Chinese crypto entrepreneur Chandler Guo argued that the large overseas Chinese population could carry DCEP abroad, while a Beijing analyst described pressure on the central bank to move quickly so that Facebook's planned Libra coin would not get there first.
The years since have tempered those expectations:
- Pilots expanded to many more cities in 2021 and 2022, and by the end of 2021 users in the trial had made transactions worth about US$13.8 billion.
- Uptake by foreign visitors at the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics was limited, as familiar cards and apps remained easier to use.
- China has used the e-CNY in some cross-border trials, including a 2023 crude oil settlement by PetroChina, but the renminbi's share of world reserves remains small.
- Facebook's Libra, renamed Diem in December 2020, never launched; the project shut down in January 2022 and its assets were sold to Silvergate.
How the Bitcoin reserve idea has developed since 2021
Harper's remark looked speculative in 2021. Since then, a few governments have tested the idea in very different ways:
- El Salvador made Bitcoin legal tender in September 2021 and built up a national holding. As part of a $1.4 billion IMF loan agreed in December 2024, it scaled back, and in February 2025 Bitcoin's legal tender status was removed. See our report on its early purchases.
- The United States created a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve by executive order on 6 March 2025. It is funded with Bitcoin the government already owned, mostly coins forfeited in criminal cases, not with new purchases on the open market.
- Other states, including China, the UK and Ukraine, hold Bitcoin mainly through seizures or donations, while Bhutan built holdings through state-run mining. The Czech National Bank has said it would consider a small allocation.
Even so, these holdings are tiny compared with global foreign exchange reserves, which run to many trillions of dollars. In practice, Harper's prediction of a slightly broader basket with the dollar still on top has held up better than either the "Bitcoin will replace the dollar" or "Bitcoin will never matter" camps.
What to take from it
For readers following this debate, a few points help keep the noise in perspective:
- A politician saying an asset could become part of reserves is not an endorsement or a forecast of price.
- Reserve status depends on deep, stable markets and trust, which is why the dollar's lead has lasted through many predictions of its decline.
- Bitcoin's price swings are large, which makes it awkward for institutions whose main job is stability.
- Central bank digital currencies and cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin are opposites in design: one is controlled by a state, the other is meant to be outside any state's control.
Nothing here is investment advice. Anyone weighing a purchase of crypto assets should consider the risk of steep losses and, if in doubt, speak to a qualified financial adviser.
Sources: Cointelegraph, January 2021: Harper interview report; Wikipedia: Reserve currency; Wikipedia: Digital renminbi; Wikipedia: Diem; Wikipedia: Bitcoin in El Salvador; Wikipedia: Strategic Bitcoin Reserve.
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