The Ledger · Near — one to five years

From The Rational Prophet (Book Four of The Laws of Game Theory)

The bet

The bet

In China, the one economy that has declared de-dollarisation as policy and publishes its cross-border payments by currency, the share of its own cross-border payments made in renminbi rises, while the dollar's share of stablecoin settlement holds above ninety per cent. The two rails move in opposite directions.

Win

The renminbi share of cross-border payments in the twelve months to the reading is above its share in the last twelve months published before publication, while dollar stablecoins hold above ninety per cent of adjusted settlement and of supply in every month.

Lose

Either dollar share falls below ninety per cent, or the renminbi share does not rise.

Expiry

Twelve to twenty-four months.

Check it

The Visa Onchain Analytics dashboard, free and without sign-in, for adjusted settlement volume by token; DefiLlama's free stablecoin data for supply by currency; the monthly table of cross-border receipts and payments by currency from China's foreign exchange regulator.

In protocol form

Word for word from Appendix D of the book, the Prediction Protocol, where this bet is entered as The rails. References to sections (§) are to that appendix.

Universe

the economy named in §3.1, China, plus the global stablecoin market.

Source

for settlement, the Visa Onchain Analytics dashboard, free and without sign-in: monthly adjusted transaction volume by stablecoin, with automated and inorganic activity filtered by its published method; for supply, DefiLlama's free stablecoin data, circulating supply by currency peg; for the official rail, the monthly table of cross-border receipts and payments by banks on behalf of clients, by currency, published by China's State Administration of Foreign Exchange. If the settlement dashboard stops publishing, the bet scores VOID rather than moving to a substitute.

Definitions

the dollar share of settlement is adjusted volume in dollar-pegged tokens as a proportion of adjusted volume in all tokens the dashboard shows. The dashboard follows only a few tokens that are not in dollars, so the dollar share of supply, across every currency peg, is a second test: a token the dashboard does not follow still counts against the bet. Tokens backed by gold or other commodities are not stablecoins for this bet. The local-currency share is renminbi receipts plus payments as a proportion of all receipts plus payments in that table, summed over twelve months.

Calculation

the local-currency share for the twelve months to the reading, against the last twelve months published before publication, which are named with the baseline; both dollar shares in every month of the window.

Baseline

the three shares at publication.

Cause

the two series are simultaneous outcomes of different incentives — a state's push for its own currency, and the demand of firms and token issuers for the most convenient dollar. Moving apart at the same time does not show that one causes the other, and the bet scores the divergence, not its cause. The competing explanation, coincidence, gains ground if dollar tokens hold their share only because they stay a niche unconnected to trade, or if the renminbi share rises chiefly through settlement the state directs while private payment choices stay unchanged.

Why not per country

attribution of onchain traffic to a country is unreliable at every provider, and the providers say so.

Known weakness

both halves already point the predicted way at publication. The renminbi share of these payments has been rising for years, and dollar tokens hold almost all stablecoin supply. So the bet says less than it seems. It loses mainly if a serious stablecoin that is not in dollars appears, or if the renminbi share stops rising, and the first of those is the event it was written to watch for. A simple trend extrapolation of both series at publication predicts the same outcome, so a HIT shows that the method agrees with the trend, not that it beat it. The bet earns information only if the trend breaks one way and the game-theoretic reasoning had said which.

Baseline at publication

Reading date of record: 10 October 2026

What is recorded

Dollar share of adjusted stablecoin settlement · dollar share of stablecoin supply · renminbi share of cross-border receipts and payments, over the last twelve months published before publication

Value at publication

Dollar share of adjusted stablecoin settlement 99.89% (September 2026, the last full month; $324.6bn adjusted, of which $0.35bn in euro tokens) · dollar share of stablecoin supply 99.46% (DefiLlama, total circulating in US dollars across every peg, 10 October 2026) · renminbi share of cross-border receipts and payments 51.27% (SAFE, September 2025 to August 2026, the last twelve months published before publication) (read 10 October 2026)

Author’s probability 85% that this bet scores HIT. Registered on 10 October 2026.

Sources

• Visa Onchain Analytics
• DefiLlama stablecoin data
• State Administration of Foreign Exchange, cross-border receipts and payments by currency

Not investment advice. The bet describes what the book expects to happen; nothing here is a recommendation to buy, sell or hold anything.

Last reviewed 10 October 2026