However, as is often the case, there's plenty of news happening behind the scenes, and today we have a guest column from my colleague Vince Lanci, who recently reported on an update about the BRICS 40% gold-backed UNIT currency proposal.

-Pepe Escobar

While many were upset when the 2024 BRICS Summit came and went without a launch (although the meeting did produce an official acknowledgement that the UNIT concept was an 'issue under discussion' on the BRICS Pay website), this short video clip of Pepe Escobar suggests that the project is actually still well on schedule.

For nearly two decades, the global payments system has relied almost entirely on debt-backed sovereign money and correspondent banking trust to conduct trade. That architecture is now fracturing under geopolitical strain, sanctions regimes, and capital controls. As settlement rails bifurcate along East-West lines, experiments are emerging to rebuild trust at the asset level rather than the sovereign balance-sheet level.

UNIT represents one of the clearest formal attempts to do precisely that: engineer a basket-backed, collateral-anchored settlement instrument intended specifically for wholesale, cross-border trade in a multipolar financial world.

The UNIT concept originates with the Unit Foundation, which describes the instrument as a supranational settlement unit backed by a reserve basket composed of:

• 60% sovereign fiat currencies (for transactional stability)

• 40% physical gold (for intrinsic collateral anchoring)

Issuance operates through a fractal, node-based model. Each participating node deposits a full replica of the reserve basket locally and mints a proportional quantity of UNIT tokens. There is no single central vault, no supranational issuer, and no sovereign guarantee. Supply discipline arises from asset custody and issuance rules rather than debt issuance authority.

Critically, UNIT is non-redeemable at the holder level. Token holders cannot convert UNIT into gold or fiat. Only entire nodes may liquidate reserves during structured exits or buyouts. This design stabilizes reserves and mirrors historic trade-clearing units rather than consumer currencies.

• Unlike CBDCs, UNIT is not issued by any state nor used for domestic payments.

• Unlike stablecoins, UNIT is not designed for retail circulation or reserve convertibility.

• It most closely resembles Keynes's proposed Bancor: a non-redeemable, basket-anchored settlement unit designed specifically for international clearing.

• Basket stability

• Non-redeemable issuance discipline

• Distributed reserve custody

• Sovereign neutrality

• Wholesale-only settlement use

The UNIT's digital execution has been undertaken by the International Research Institute for Advanced Systems (IRIAS), which announced deployment of the UNIT token on the Cardano blockchain.

1. Authenticity certification: Guarantees non-duplication and traceable transfers of UNIT tokens.

2. Settlement execution: Enables cross-border transfers without dependence on correspondent banking chains.

3. Accounting reconciliation: Provides immutable ledgers for jurisdiction-spanning settlements.

UNIT itself remains the monetary object; blockchain is the rail that carries it.

UNIT is native to distributed ledger and CBDC rails and only indirectly compatible with legacy messaging systems like SWIFT, which lack asset-exchange functionality.

UNIT is not intended to be a consumer currency. Its roles are purely institutional:

• Medium of Exchange: Direct settlement of commodity and trade invoices without intermediary FX conversions.

• Unit of Account: Pricing reference for cross-border contracts and intergovernmental agreements.

• Settlement Instrument: Alternative clearing unit capable of bypassing correspondent banking chokepoints.

1. Trade invoice denominated in UNIT.

2. Payment transmitted across blockchain or sovereign settlement rail.

3. UNIT credited to exporter or counterparty.

UNIT echoes the original Keynes Bancor vision from 1944:

• Multilateral settlement unit of account.

• Collateral anchoring without redemption rights.

• Issuance governed by contribution rules, not credit expansion.

• Designed to stabilize trade balances rather than serve domestic consumption.

A working proof that collateral-based settlement systems are being formally engineered as the global payments network fragments.

In that sense, UNIT is neither marketing fiction nor geopolitical weapon. It is a progress marker:

• Confirmation that asset anchoring is replacing trust anchoring.

• Evidence that multipolar settlement is moving from talk to infrastructure.

• A case study validating the structural themes observed over the past decade.

It signals that the solution set is being built.

This is documentation of an ongoing architectural shift in global finance: from sovereign debt trust to collateral trust, from single-rail settlement to multi-rail clearing, and from centralized monetary authority to distributed issuance logic. In other words: It's likely happening.

-Vince Lanci, GoldFix