Is the AI ​​Data Center Boom Building an Infrastructure for Tokenization and Regulation?

The math doesn’t add up and the logic doesn’t make sense. That would be the epitome of the current AI bubble. If that’s true and AI doesn’t live up to its promise, what’s the point of building massive data centers?

Enter the token economy: a process where legal ownership of real-world assets (RWAs), assets, and funds are converted into blockchain-based digital tokens. In theory, this allows for more efficient, faster, and more secure international trade. Basically, it is a change in the way the economy works by combining finance and digital technology.

Tokenization enables the monetization of almost anything that exists, turning passive physical assets into highly liquid, speculative assets. You may tokenize the title of a building or the future harvest, but also a piece of artwork or a fraction of a worker’s shift. It allows the speculative economy, based on financial instruments and not on trade or production, to continue to grow. This is one of the reasons why financial institutions support this change.

Tokenization adds a new book to the economy. The banking system has introduced a book of structure for all transactions using fiat money. A transaction was no longer just an agreement between two parties; there was always a third party—the banks, which controlled the money set by the government. Because money ceased to be an asset in itself, those who controlled the currency had a handbook to control the entire economy.

Tokenization suggests that it will reduce the number of hidden ledgers (private banks, clearing houses, or the central bank), but these can be considered part of a single structural book: the fiat ledger. Initially, tokenization will add a second structural letter: asset token or currency token. In a transaction between two parties, they will use fiat (the first ledger) to trade in a token (the second ledger). This is the reason why technology companies support this change. In fact, they will become an integral part of the financial system.

Eventually, when CBDCs or stablecoins replace fiat, both ledgers will be merged into one. This will mean that the financial sector and the technical sector have merged into one. For the rest of us it will mean that the money situation has changed. Fiat currency carries nominal value, even if it is not intrinsic, meaning that the one dollar bill is visible and anonymous, independent of the issuer once issued (without inflation). CBDCs and stablecoins do not exist. They are programmable currencies, meaning they can be programmed to behave according to the wishes of those who control them. That is why governments support this change.

This process is ongoing. According to the Boston Consulting Group, in less than ten years, the issuance of asset tokens is expected to exceed 16 billion dollars and represent 10% of global GDP by 2030. The World Economic Forum was optimistic; predicted that the 10% limit would be reached by 2027. Independent analysts, such as Patrick Wood, expect the process to be accelerated due to a combination of factors.

In an article entitled “An Accelerated Timeline Test of ‘You Will Own Nothing’,” Wood says the acceleration of AI, the technocratic capture of the legislature, the explosion of data centers, Pax Silica, the federal wrapper around state law, and the “new whip” of the BIS (which means that the bank number agreed upon will create the same conditions for the bank to make the same financial conditions). continuous acceleration of the tokenization process.

However, the tokenization of the economy does not happen in a vacuum. Every token and every token transaction requires both data storage and computing power. Unlike a decentralized blockchain, such as Bitcoin, ensuring control of the tokenization process and full surveillance capabilities requires that storage and computing power be accessible only by authorized organizations. That means that the ledger will be distributed through many data centers around the world, but only organizations such as large banks, private banks, or technology providers will be able to use nodes that confirm transactions.

When every single transaction in many and many countries—whether buying a loaf of bread or paying for a house—is tokenized and settled almost instantaneously, the amount of information and computing power required reaches the capacity of an industrial data server. But if you add to that the ability to control and monitor those processes through algorithmic intelligence, what you might need in terms of computing power and data storage might be similar to the data center architecture we’re seeing right now.

I’m not an expert in AI or tokenization, but I know that computing and storage requirements are not the same (with AI relying on GPUs vs. tokens relying on CPUs). However, what I am trying to argue is not that the current AI infrastructure can be quickly used for tokenization, but that a fully tokenized economy integrated with identity-linked transaction data, cross-border collaboration and machine-based monitoring would require an infrastructure closer to big AI/data-analytics systems than a simple payment ledger.

I asked the LLM (Gemini) about this—first, because I was curious about the answer he would give, and second, because I wanted to know if it technically made sense beyond my rough understanding. Of course, the answer is not perfect, and some readers may argue the opposite.

The question was simple: can the current construction of data centers be used to store and process economic tokens? After providing information about the technical differences, the summary is complete:

“The development of the data center lays the visible tracks of a completely digital financial system. While today’s big financial spending is largely driven by AI, the global effect of high-security, high-bandwidth server farms can be useful to store, process, and protect the billions of dollars expected to move into branded assets over the next decade.”

Tokenization is a mandatory implementation method. If current LLM models don’t lead to AGI by simply multiplying computing power—which seems to be the logic behind data center design—then AI companies will have a hard time justifying the cost under current use cases. If so, then the tokenization process, and its monitoring using expensive, newly developed AI models, can use that same infrastructure.

I understand that this is a hypothetical situation, but I think it is the most logical one in what seems to be an absurd, massive data center construction that is happening under the AI ​​narrative. I’m not necessarily saying that tokens and monitoring the economy was the original goal of data centers, but maybe it’s what’s being considered if LLM models fail to deliver on their promises.

Another possible use of data centers, related to the organization of CBDCs and stablecoins, is being explored. Current surveillance methods—digital, financial, telecommunications, or geographic—are divided into categories. A private technology company may know your online behavior, another your banking history, and another may track your movements. However, when you combine all this information and apply algorithmic intelligence—which is what Palantir, among other companies, is doing—the possibilities grow exponentially. When you pair that with disciplined financial behavior, the full potential of structured finance becomes apparent.

It is likely that, as happened earlier during the telecom bubble, the use cases that will inherit the current data center infrastructure will differ from those for which it was allegedly designed. I don’t think it’s hard to see how the current AI bubble could leave behind technology and infrastructure that would lead to a very different society, because the nature of what we call money would have changed and the power of state surveillance would have increased dramatically.

The question then is: wasn’t that the intention all along, and is it just another narrative needed to cover it up?

Imagine trying to justify the use of billions-many of them from financial institutions and government funding through contracts-and putting a huge strain on energy and water resources to build data centers with the current capacity, only for the purpose of creating economic tokens, using CBDCs, and allowing AI monitoring. There can be a lot of resistance. However, if it is done with the promise of building some kind of utopian future, that resistance may be mitigated. At least for those who believe it.