8-7-2025 – The blockchain was supposed to be about freedom, decentralization, and breaking free from the systems that concentrate power in the hands of the few. So why are we now seeing proposals to use our technology as a tool for what amounts to digital colonialism?

The leaked proposal from the Tony Blair Institute and Boston Consulting Group to tokenize Palestinian land in Gaza isn’t just morally reprehensible—it’s a betrayal of everything crypto was meant to represent. This isn’t innovation. It’s weaponized technology in service of displacement, and every crypto veteran should be furious about it.

The scheme: Digital displacement wrapped in blockchain buzzwords

The proposal, titled “The Great Trust,” reads like a dystopian parody of Silicon Valley hubris. Pay half a million Palestinians to leave Gaza. Tokenize their land. Sell it to international investors. Build Trump-themed resorts and Musk-branded manufacturing zones. Turn one of the world’s most tragic humanitarian crises into a blockchain trading opportunity.

The mechanics are straightforward real-world asset tokenization—the same technology being used to fractionalize ownership in Manhattan real estate or fine art. Palestinian land would be placed in a trust, with ownership shares represented by blockchain tokens tradeable on centralized exchanges. As Chris Yin from Plume Network explained, “The title for the land is put into a special vehicle that only does one thing—in this case, a trust that holds the title.”

But context matters. This isn’t tokenizing a luxury condo in Miami. This is proposing to use blockchain technology to facilitate the permanent displacement of an entire population from their ancestral homeland.

Why this matters more than you think

For those of us who’ve been in crypto since the early days, this proposal represents a fundamental corruption of our movement’s core principles. Bitcoin emerged from the 2008 financial crisis as a response to institutional power and monetary manipulation. The cypherpunk ethos that birthed this space was explicitly anti-authoritarian, focused on empowering individuals against oppressive systems.

Yet here we see crypto being proposed as a tool for the ultimate expression of institutional power: the systematic displacement of a people from their land, packaged as “efficiency” and “modernization.”

This isn’t just about Gaza. It’s about what crypto becomes when it’s divorced from its founding principles. When blockchain becomes just another tool for extracting value rather than redistributing power, we’ve lost the plot entirely.

The proposal also reveals the profound technical ignorance of those pushing it. As Sam Mudie from tokenization project Savea noted, “Implementing commercial-scale real estate/land tokenization is probably still 2-3 years away, and that would be for small, straightforward use-cases—not massive, war-ridden plots of land in a politically and geographically contested country.”

These aren’t serious technologists. They’re opportunists using blockchain buzzwords to dress up what amounts to a land grab.

The precedent problem

Some will argue this is just one bad proposal that got rightfully shot down. But precedent matters in crypto. Remember when Facebook announced Libra (later Diem) and claimed it would bank the unbanked? The crypto community rightly recognized it as a corporate power grab masquerading as financial inclusion.

This Gaza tokenization scheme is worse. At least Libra was trying to create a new financial system. This proposal uses our technology to dismantle an existing homeland.

The fact that it was presented to the Trump administration—and echoes the president’s own “Riviera of the Middle East” rhetoric—shows how quickly crypto can be co-opted by geopolitical interests. When blockchain becomes a tool for ethnic cleansing, we’ve crossed a line that can’t be uncrossed.

The real-world asset trap

The proposal also highlights a concerning trend in the RWA (Real-World Asset) tokenization space. While tokenizing gold, real estate, or artwork can democratize access to investment opportunities, the technology is morally neutral. It amplifies existing power structures rather than challenging them.

In legitimate RWA projects, all parties consent to tokenization. Property owners choose to fractionalize their assets. Investors voluntarily purchase tokens. The blockchain simply facilitates more efficient ownership transfer and trading.

But when you’re using tokenization to facilitate forced displacement—even with financial incentives—you’re not democratizing ownership. You’re digitizing colonialism.

Where we go from here

The crypto community’s response to this proposal will define what we stand for. Are we technologists building tools for human freedom, or are we just creating more efficient mechanisms for exploitation?

The Palestinian activists who called this plan “evil” are right. Dr. Ashok Kumar from Birkbeck Business School captured it perfectly: “Like vultures circling a dying body, men like Tony Blair, multimillionaire, war criminal, profiteer, prepare to swoop in and make millions from the rubble—buying up the land from which its people were driven.”

We need to reject this not just as Palestinians or as humanitarians, but as crypto advocates who believe our technology should serve human dignity, not undermine it.

The test of our values

Every technology can be used for good or ill. The internet gave us both Wikipedia and surveillance capitalism. Nuclear physics gave us both clean energy and weapons of mass destruction. Now blockchain is giving us both financial sovereignty and digital colonialism.

The Gaza tokenization proposal is a test. It’s asking whether we’ll allow our technology to be weaponized against the powerless in service of the powerful. Whether we’ll let blockchain become just another tool for those who already have everything to take what little remains from those who have nothing.

The answer should be obvious. But given how much of crypto has been captured by institutional interests and regulatory capture, it’s worth stating clearly: using blockchain to facilitate ethnic cleansing is not innovation. It’s an abomination.

The cypherpunks who built this space did so to empower individuals against oppressive systems. Let’s honor that legacy by ensuring our technology serves human flourishing, not human displacement. The blockchain should be a tool for freedom, not a mechanism for digital colonialism.