I guess the cheer around BRICS is just to support an opposition to the West, I see it as the idea of another two-party system, as if that really changes incentives or works out better

As someone in a BRICS country, I can say that not much chatter goes on about it, or that it's changing anything on the ground, a few small trade deals here and there and a lot of larping. It's also a narrative to keep the people in check like oh we're going through some changes and the poor conditions you're experiencing now is because we have to move away from the dollar bla bla bla, bullshit

As for the monetary aspect, yeah I'm not sure what's going on there, like you say they're still using dollars and even with the trade down in local currencies, they're finding out what a shit show it is, as exchange rates are a ballache with so little liquidity between the pairs, then when you do settle the trade what do you do with the forex you don't use to trade back? You not going into any of these stock markets or bond markets as you would with the US, so you just sitting on a currency devaluing against the dollar and nowhere to store it.

Bitcoin makes a lot of sense for this issue, but I do think it's a little to small with its current market cap to be able to settle what these countries need. Still seems solvable with time to grow the market and build swap lines between your shitcoins settled in btc versus the idea of having gold deposits with IOUs just keeps like some shitcoin DEFI idea