Oil, Gold, and the End of the Petrodollar: The Real Venezuela Story
The United States did not just topple a dictator. It may have triggered the next chapter in the global rejection of the dollar.
While headlines focus on drugs and humanitarian crises, the real story lies beneath the surface. Heavy crude. Gold. Rare earth elements. Venezuela is more than a failed state. It is a resource hub at the center of a monetary realignment already in motion.
For decades, U.S. refineries have been calibrated for the one kind of oil we barely produce ourselves. Heavy crude. Venezuela has it. Canada has it. But with Canada already supplying sixty percent of U.S. imports and BRICS nations making strategic moves in South America, Washington acted.
This is not foreign policy. It is monetary survival.
Venezuela had moved outside the dollar. Selling oil to China. Partnering on infrastructure through the Belt and Road Initiative. Joining a rising group of nations building a gold-based system to sidestep Western financial dominance.
Then suddenly, hours after Maduro meets with Chinese officials, he is taken into custody. A new power structure is declared.
Some of Venezuela’s gold is frozen in the Bank of England. Billions of dollars’ worth. The rest lies in the ground. Or at least it did. If you do not hold it, you do not own it. Venezuela learned that the hard way.
This intervention is not a return to order. It is a scramble to delay collapse. Since the freezing of Russia’s reserves in 2022, the world has been on notice. The dollar is not neutral. It is a weapon. And if it can be weaponized, it can be replaced.
This move buys the United States time. But it also sends a message to every other country considering gold settlement or dollar alternatives. The system is fragile. So fragile that it now requires force to sustain it.
And that is a message the world will not forget.
About ITM Trading: ITM Trading has spent nearly 30 years helping clients prepare for monetary resets, inflation, and systemic risk using physical gold and silver. We focus on education, historical context, and strategies designed to protect wealth when trust in the system breaks down.
