According to Gizmodo, the Trump Organization and London-based luxury real estate developer DAR Global have announced Trump International Hotel Maldives, which will be tokenized on an unspecified blockchain. This marks the first tokenization of a real estate project still in development. The announcement comes as Trump-affiliated crypto activities have massively expanded, including World Liberty Financial, the TRUMP memecoin, and multiple NFT collections. Recent developments like the pardon of former Binance CEO Changpeng “CZ” Zhao and potential conflicts of interest around the TRUMP memecoin highlight concerns about crypto profiteering. Meanwhile, the crypto industry poured significant money into Trump’s presidential campaign before his victory, creating an environment where financial crime appears effectively legal when conducted on blockchain.
What tokenization actually means
Here’s the thing about “tokenization” – it’s basically become the new buzzword that replaced “blockchain technology” in fintech circles. Everyone from Robinhood’s Vlad Tenev to BlackRock’s Larry Fink is talking about it as the next big thing. But what does it actually accomplish when you’re tokenizing a centrally-managed hotel development? You’re taking something that already exists in the traditional financial system and putting it on a blockchain, often with unclear benefits beyond marketing hype or regulatory avoidance.
The centralization problem
And that’s where we hit the fundamental contradiction. Satoshi Nakamoto’s original vision was about removing trust from monetary policy and enabling censorship-resistant payments. But when you’re tokenizing dollar deposits or building payment rails on platforms that are themselves becoming increasingly centralized, what’s the point? Look at JPMorgan Chase tokenizing dollar deposits on Coinbase’s Base blockchain – a bank using a blockchain effectively owned by another financial institution. During recent Amazon Web Services downtime, we saw how centralized these supposedly decentralized systems really are at the base layer.
Regulatory arbitrage reality
So what’s really going on here? It’s becoming increasingly clear that regulatory arbitrage is the primary goal rather than truly decentralized finance. Coinbase is even launching its own version of initial coin offerings – the same mechanism that fueled the fraudulent crypto projects of 2017-2018. They claim they’re adding protections this time, but the pattern feels familiar. As Blockworks Editor David Canellis has noted on X, many are calling this “crime season” with only partial joking.
Where this is headed
The fundamental issue, as former SEC Chief of Staff Amanda Fischer has been pointing out on X, is that existing securities laws already apply to most of this activity. The crypto industry should arguably be more upset with the reality of those laws than with the SEC’s enforcement of them. With major exchanges continuing to list dubious, unregistered investments as highlighted in The New York Times, the Clarity Act developments will be crucial to watch. Basically, we’re in a weird limbo where the technology promises decentralization but the implementation often delivers centralized control with regulatory advantages.
