Payment tokens are not at issue here, but asset-based tokens are. When physical assets are tokenized, they can be traded anywhere. Consider all the homes that have been added to large portfolios through Build-to-Rent programs. These are prime for tokenization. Then there is the issue of 640 million acres owned by the Federal Government, which, if the Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick has his way, will be tokenized in due time. Once such tokens are released to trading, they will be gobbled up by companies like BlackRock, which have huge cash reserves. First, however, I will show that the Islamic world is already entrenched in an asset-based system that eschews debt and usury of any kind. Further, Islamic nations are leading the world in FinTech (Financial Technology).

When I wrote Global Banks Adopting Islam in 2007, few could have seen how right I was to quote the Bible warning that "the love of money is the root of all sorts of evil" (1 Tim. 6:10). What began as a seemingly opportunistic flirtation between Western mega-banks and Islamic finance has morphed into something far more consequential and sinister: a fundamental restructuring of global finance itself.