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The events unfolding in the Strait of Hormuz are not just a geopolitical story. According to analyst Mickle, they may be the moment the world learns it does not need the dollar to settle trade.
“What’s happening in the Strait is teaching all of these other countries how to transact in something other than the petrodollar,” Mickle said in a recent discussion. “If that starts to happen, we’re going to see more $XRP, Ethereum and a handful of other tokens being used in some of these global settlements.”
Flight From Currency, Not Just the Dollar
The framework underpinning Mickle’s argument draws on Ray Dalio’s long-cycle economic theory, specifically the final stage of a reserve currency collapse where the flight is not from one currency to another but from currency itself.
For years, that final stage was assumed to involve the Chinese Yuan stepping into the dollar’s role. Mickle argues that the narrative has shifted. Even Dalio, historically a gold advocate, appears to have pivoted toward something broader. The question is no longer which nation’s currency dominates. It is whether any nation’s currency dominates at all.
“I think Ray Dalio has pivoted his thesis because that final stage is now a flight from currency itself,” Mickle said. “Digital assets create an off-ramp from the global centralised fiat currency and into decentralised neutral liquidity sources.”
Why $XRP Fits the Moment
Mickle was specific about what qualities matter when nations are looking for alternative settlement rails. Deep liquidity pools. International settlement capability. The ability to move value at speed. And neutrality, meaning no single government controls it.
“There’s only a handful of tokens that fall into that category and $XRP is one of them,” he said. “That is exactly where an asset like $XRP can be strategically positioned at a global level.”
Gold, he said, used to fill that neutral store of value role. But physical gold cannot settle 130 ships a day moving through a strait in real time. Digital assets can.
The Dominos Are Just Starting to Fall
Mickle’s timeline is explicitly long term. Dedollarisation and deglobalisation are multi-decade trends in his view and the technology to enable them is only now being introduced at the moment those trends are accelerating.
“I think we’re just at the very start of a technology being introduced to allow that to happen,” he said. “This is the dominoes just beginning to fall.”
With the Strait of Hormuz closed, Iran demanding crypto tolls and direct US-Iran talks collapsing in Islamabad, the scenario Mickle describes is no longer theoretical. It is being stress-tested in real time.