New Delhi, July 29 -- The signing of a 20-year data-centre lease probably does not register as a monetary event. Even the announcement of a dollar-pegged stablecoin linked to the AI boom would not necessarily be given this label. But such developments are proliferating-and contributing to the formation of a system in which a critical input for the global economy is priced, paid for, and ultimately recycled into dollar assets.

This is not a new concept. Since the 1970s, the pricing of oil in US dollars has increased global demand for the currency and generated export revenues for oil producers, which often directed them towards US markets. But the petrodollar is a template, not a prophecy. It shows that when production, payments and asset...