CryptoSlate
Bitcoin bulls have read the shrinking dollar share of global foreign-exchange reserves as a slow-motion signal of sovereign Bitcoin adoption. A New York Fed analysis published Sept. 2, 2026 argues that is a misread. Researchers Linda S. Goldberg, Oliver Hannaoui and Sneha Parthasarathy show the dollar slipped from 64% of global official FX reserves at year-end 2015 to 56% at year-end 2025, but most of the decline traced to a few large reserve portfolios growing in size, not to countries actively diversifying out of the greenback.
Why it matters
The Fed decomposition splits the move into two channels. A "preferences" channel covers countries actively changing their currency mix. A reserve-size channel captures a country's total reserves growing or shrinking, which mechanically changes its weight in the global average. Switzerland ran the textbook example between 2015 and 2019: it accumulated reserves and pulled down the aggregate dollar share even while its own dollar allocation rose. Across the 76 countries with complete endpoint data for 2015 to 2019, preferences and reserve-size contributions declined by 1.2 and 1.5 percentage points respectively. For 2019 to 2023, the 62 countries with complete data contributed a positive 0.3 percentage points through preferences and a negative 0.5 percentage points through reserve-size changes.
Market impact
China, Russia, Mexico and Morocco lacked 2023 dollar-allocation data; under assumptions matching the observed 2.3-percentage-point global decline, the researchers inferred a combined negative 2.0-percentage-point preferences contribution for that group. The underlying Staff Report 1087 models reserves above liquidity needs as the investable portion where diversification is more likely to appear, but even that does not identify the destination. The Nov. 13, 2025 Czech National Bank $1 million digital-asset test, which included Bitcoin alongside a dollar stablecoin and a tokenized deposit, was held explicitly outside international reserves. Neither NY Fed source measures sovereign Bitcoin purchases or estimates a price effect.
Frequently asked questions
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Did the NY Fed say central banks are buying Bitcoin?
No. The Sept. 2, 2026 NY Fed analysis separated the shrinking dollar share into a preferences channel and a reserve-size channel and made no claim about sovereign Bitcoin purchases.
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What drove the dollar share from 64% to 56% between 2015 and 2025?
Per NY Fed researchers, most of the move came from a few large reserve portfolios growing in size, mechanically pulling down the global average rather than countries actively diversifying out of dollars.
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Is the Czech National Bank's $1M Bitcoin test counted as sovereign reserves?
No. The Nov. 13, 2025 test portfolio, which included Bitcoin alongside a dollar stablecoin and a tokenized deposit, was held explicitly outside international reserves.
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What would actually prove sovereign Bitcoin demand?
A disclosed allocation, a funding source, and executed purchases, with official reserves separated from off-reserve holdings. The IMF COFER data used in the NY Fed study supplies none of that.
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Does a shrinking dollar reserve share affect Bitcoin price?
The NY Fed analysis does not estimate a price effect. The link between the two is correlation drawn from chart pairings, not a mechanism the researchers modeled.
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