Mohamed El-Erian isn’t all that impressed with the US crypto reserve.

“So far it’s not as big a deal as people had hoped for,” the investing titan told a crowd at Blockworks’ Digital Asset Summit Wednesday.

“It becomes a big deal when people say, ‘Instead of holding dollar reserves, I’m going to hold bitcoin reserves.’ … That, we haven’t seen so far.”

But it could happen as the US continues to wield the dollar and the worldwide payment system as a weapon against hostile countries, he said.

After Russia invaded Ukraine, the US froze Russia’s access to its foreign exchange reserves, and officials have debated seizing the reserves outright.

“That’s why gold is doing what it’s doing. Gold has broken every single historical correlation,” he said.

Gold hit another all-time high Wednesday, trading above $3,047.

El-Erian attributed gold’s rally this year to central banks buying the precious metal in order to diversify “away from the dollar.”

“If you were to let this system run, suddenly Bitcoin has a role to play internationally.”

El-Erian is one of the world’s most renowned economists. He is the former CEO of PIMCO and now serves as chief economic advisor at its parent company, Allianz.

Bitcoin is a maturing asset with “multiple identities,” he said — much like the emerging market bonds in which he focussed early in his career.

“If you look at Bitcoin, you see that the person who’s the marginal price-setter changes over time,” he said.

“Sometimes it’s the speculators, who are in and out, sometimes it’s the fundamentalist adopters, sometimes it’s the institutional adopters.”

El-Erian also said stablecoins are having an impact on the “core role of the dollar.”

“This is true also of Bitcoin, it’s true of crypto — people now have a much bigger range of choices,” he said, “not just of payment, but the ecosystem of saving.”

Meanwhile, he noted that Donald Trump’s on-again, off-again approach to tariff policy has split economists.

“This could be the Margaret Thatcher/Ronald Reagan moment. Where someone comes in and decides to fundamentally alter the structure of the economy,” he said.

Those who support Trump’s efforts to restructure US government and international trade flows believe it could lead to a streamlined government, reduced debt, and an unleashed private sector.

But he says others believe it could kill growth.

“Then there’s the other possibility, which is the Jimmy Carter possibility,” he said. “That policy pushes you into a stagflation, which persists.”

Aleks Gilbert is Inside Solana’ DeFi Correspondent based in New York. You can contact him at aleks@dlnews.com.