GOALS
The BRICS platform has three strategic goals.

  • Manage financial transactions between platform members
  • Collect information to generate real-time exchange rates
  • Adjust foreign reserves pools between platform members

CENTRALIZED SYSTEM
Also known as hub-and-spoke. This is the design of the Federal Reserve and the spokes (realms) represent countries/provinces/states. A centralized system requires rigorous interfaces but it's efficient and scalable. There are over 100 countries with a dollar exchange rate but control is limited to the common hub interface.

POINT-TO-POINT
But the BRICS aren't pursuing a centralized system (yet), they're creating a point-to-point system. PTP systems are less scalable but there's only a few BRIC countries. PTP is also more complex, less efficient but more flexible. We can manage exchanges between Realm 1/Realm 2 differently than Realm 2/Realm 3 or Realm 1/Realm 3.

This is the critical design difference. We can have asymmetrical, floating exchange rates which don't impact the other exchange rates very much.