Jim Rickards for The Daily Reckoning discuses how Russia is aggressively working to decouple its economy from dependence on the US dollar. Gold, a SWIFT alternative, and even blockchain technology are being utilized to free Russia from US...

The head of Russia's central bank, Elvira Nabiullina, has reported to Vladimir Putin that "There was the threat of being shut out of SWIFT. We updated our transaction system, and if anything happens, all SWIFT-format operations will continue to work. We created an analogous system."

Russia is also part of a reported Chinese plan to install a new international monetary order that excludes U.S. dollars. Under that plan, China could buy Russian oil with yuan and Russia could then exchange that yuan for gold on the Shanghai exchange.

Now it appears Russia has another weapon in its anti-dollar arsenal.

Russia's development bank, VEB, and several Russian state ministries are reportedly teaming up to develop blockchain technology. They want to create a fully encrypted, distributed, inexpensive payments system that does not rely on Western banks, SWIFT or the U.S. to move money around.

This has nothing to do with bitcoin, which is just another digital token. The blockchain technology (now often referred to as distributed ledger technology, or DLT) is a platform that can facilitate a wide variety of transfers - possibly including a new Russian-state cryptocurrency backed by gold.