Quote from the article- 'The alliance that initially included Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa has expanded rapidly to embrace Iran, Egypt, Ethiopia, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia. Turkey, Azerbaijan and Malaysia have formally applied to become members, and a few others have expressed interest in joining.

Observers see the Brics summit as part of the Kremlin's efforts to showcase support from the Global South amid spiralling tensions with the West while expanding economic and financial ties.

Proposed projects include the creation of a new payment system that would offer an alternative to the global bank messaging network SWIFT and allow Moscow to dodge Western sanctions and trade with partners.'

Putin, who will hold about 20 bilateral meetings on the sidelines, conferred with Xi, Modi and South African President Cyril Ramaphosa on Tuesday ahead of the summit's opening.

Xi and Putin announced a “no-limits” partnership weeks before Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022. They already met twice this year, in Beijing in May and at a Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit in Kazakhstan in July.

Welcoming Xi, Putin described the relations between Moscow and Beijing as “one of the main stabilising factors on the world arena.” He vowed to “expand coordination on all multilateral forums for the sake of global stability and a fair world order.”'

It is probable that China will lead the development of the payments protocol- in fact China already has operational its CBDC e-Yuan protocol (sometimes known as DCEP) and its is ideally suited to international trade payments. China is already providing Russia (and Iran and N.Korea) with a payments alternative to SWIFT since they have been sanctioned out of SWIFT by the US.

China is demonstrating its ability to provide an almost full service alternative trading opportunity to that offered by the US SWIFT portal.

Now with Iran and Russia dependent upon China to buy their oil and gas and supply them with a wide range of manufactured goods they are also waging war against US allies in Europe and the middle east. This is a proxy war between China and the west and its costing the west more so far then China.

With the Saudis now in BRICS the petrodollar is under direct challenge to be displaced. As USD global hegemony comes under increasing pressure it is primarily China that is positioned to succeed it. Bitcoin simply does not yet have the volume, liquidity or widespread acceptance to be a major alternative- alternative though it is still an alternative.