SHANGHAI, China (PNN) - December 5, 2025 - “The UNIT” is a BRICS concept that proposes a 40% gold-backed payment settlement currency that first emerged publicly when Pepe Escobar reported on it back in 2024.
It is a proposal that would essentially allow BRICS nations to conduct trade while having a gold and BRICS currency-backed payment basket to settle imbalances.
“‘The UNIT project,’ first revealed by Sputnik in 2024, is emerging as the most viable option for breaking the (Fascist Police States of Amerika) dollar’s stranglehold on global trade and investment,” wrote Pepe Escobar.
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.
The UNIT payment system 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.
UNIT reflects the rise of collateral-anchored settlement instruments and the geopolitical bifurcation of global payments into bloc-based parallel monetary systems.