The BRICS nations, consisting of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa, are actively seeking to expand their alliance by inviting additional countries like Saudi Arabia and the UAE to join, forming what is referred to as BRICS+. Furthermore, there have been discussions within the group about the possibility of creating a shared currency called BRICS.

  • The shared currency would be “BRICS” because it would brick as much as the Brazilian currencies (yup, plural) in hyperinflation times. (I’m old enough to remember the river dolphin 100 cruzeiro coins).

    Jokes aside, opinions in this regard that I’ve seen in Brazil are rather lukewarm to the idea. Most people whom I’ve talked with didn’t even know about it; the ones that do might say that it’s a bad/good idea, but I think that most people realise that it doesn’t really matter much. Plus Lula has a tendency to speak about things that never come to fruition.

    • I can’t comment on Lula, but there is no doubt that this currency would take a very long time to gain the necessary trust even among the participants. China has been trying to push its Yuan as a new world reserve currency for some time, but this would be even harder given their economic and political regime.

      What they obviously really try to do is to -understandibly- ‘escape’ the USD and in part the EUR systems, though for the currency to be successful it would require political, social and economic reforms within most BRICS+ countries before the introduction of such a new money. Unless these reforms are made, I see little chance for this project. Many articles about it across the web are highly sensationalizing imo.

        • I don’t think that BTC is an appropriate solution currently for use as a means of payment given its high volatlity, but as a principle I agree that appropriately designed crypto could be a solution. What the world needed imo is a mix of different currencies for different use cases globally, regionally and locally.

          • Part of bitcoins volatility is very much due to liquidity and market depth. The price swings are large to be sure, but in terms of percent swings bitcoin is becoming more stable. In the early days a 95% drop would be considered normal and expected. Now it may still move by 60% but it does so over months and not days like it used to be.