About why the dollar has been the world currency for the past few decades (during which EU consolidated into a huge market with a single currency, and China became either the first or second country by economic size): the world's currency needs a country that runs huge trade deficits [0]. China is a nation of savers so their instinct is to not run trade deficits. Europe is in a similar position. US - not so much. I would not expect the dollar to lose this status any time soon.

[0] https://www.dunham.com/FA/Blog/Posts/triffins-dilemma?utm_ca...

Huh, how would this seizure take dollars away? These assets are held in Europe, their valuation is stated in Euro terms -- are they actually being held as dollars?

You can open a US dollar account in a non-US bank. Some banks don't offer this service to ordinary private citizens (others do), but I think pretty much all will if you are a (non-sanctioned) business or foreign government or high net worth individual looking to deposit large sums of cash (millions).

The bank needs to somehow hold US dollars to back its US dollar deposits, but there are various ways of doing that – e.g. put the money in its own account(s) in a US bank, hold physical US dollars in a vault somewhere, purchase US treasuries, use the deposit to fund lending denominated in US dollars (huge market for US dollar loans outside the US) – likely it is using some combination of those

So probably some of these Russian assets in Europe are euros, some are US dollars, some are other financial assets such precious metals, stocks and bonds, units in managed funds, etc – and they are just all being converted to euros for reporting purposes

> It might provide a big boost for China's efforts to get the world off the dollar standard.

At this point who cares about US dollars? I'm sure Europeans care more about Euros.

It’s the opposite. The US economic boom has seen EUR/USD fall to near parity.

Yes. But now that the US is the enemy of the free world Europeans are likely going to look to divest from the US and take care of themselves. Meaning Euro first, and likely giving preference to non-US countries in matters of trade.