Investing legend David Einhorn says gold is replacing US Treasurys as a global reserve asset

• Gold has begun to replace US Treasurys as the top asset held by central banks, David Einhorn said.
• The hedge fund titan pointed to recent reports that Chinese banks are dialing back Treasury investments.
• Central bank appetite for gold is also strong, he said, pointing to concerns about US debt and trade.

Billionaire David Einhorn thinks gold is well on its way to becoming the world's ultimate reserve asset.

The Green Light Capital founder said he believed the metal had already begun to replace US Treasurys as the top reserve asset among the world's central banks, attesting to its safe-haven status and shakier confidence in the US macro and fiscal outlook.

Einhorn pointed to reports that China has told its banks to scale back its holdings of US Treasurys.

Meanwhile, central banks' appetite for gold has been rising in recent years, he added. Central banks around the world purchased around 863 metric tons of the metal in 2025, according to data from the World Gold Council.

"The Chinese have decided they want to sort of want to compete on a currency basis. The central banks around the world are buying gold. Gold is becoming the reserve asset as opposed to Treasurys, or it's kind of mostly even at this point," Einhorn said.

Einhorn, who said his firm had been investing in gold for more than a decade, pointed to two issues in particular he believed were making gold more attractive as a long-term investment compared to Treasurys:

• US trade tensions. The US's trade policy is "very unstable," which is causing more nations to settle trade in assets other than dollars, Einhorn said.
• US debt. More investors are also worried about the US's fiscal outlook, another reason investors are shifting away from dollar-based assets, he suggested.

"Our thesis on gold over the longer term is that our fiscal policies and our monetary policies don't make any sense," Einhorn said, adding that the US's growing deficit is unsustainable.

The demand for US Treasurys has been solid at recent auctions, but investors have been preoccupied with the idea that the US is losing its dominance in financial markets for the past several years.

Worries about de-dollarization — the idea that the US dollar is losing its status as the world's reserve currency — began to pick up steam in 2022, when Russia and other BRICS nations shifted away from the greenback after being targeted by sanctions.

Fears of a broader shift away from the US intensified when President Donald Trump introduced tariffs last year, triggering a "Sell America" episode among foreign investors that has continued to flare up periodically since. The sentiment has also popularized the debasement trade, with investors scooping up hard assets out of fear that the US dollar and other fiat currencies will lose their value.