It hasn’t happened yet, but it will happen. We are not talking about a new Bitcoin or a virtual currency invented from scratch; now it is something more concrete, logical and disruptive: companies that convert their real assets into digital currencies that can be used, exchanged, saved or invested. Tokens, but with substance instead of bubbles and foam. And that foam, when it grows, produces FOMO: fear of being left out.
To understand it, you have to start with the most basic: what is a token?
A token is like a digital token that represents something that has value: an hour of work, a part of a building, a unit of energy, an NVIDIA GPU. It is not “legal” money like the peso or the dollar, but it can function as money. If people accept it, it can be exchanged. There are tokens that are worth nothing and tokens that are worth more than official coins.
Today, most tokens are experimental. Many have no backing, others depend on trust in algorithms and some are linked to the price of the dollar, such as the famous “stablecoins”. But what is coming now is different: giant companies will issue tokens backed by their assets: infrastructure, inventory, computing capacity, energy, oil, buildings or logistics. And when that happens, a new, parallel, private and corporate monetary system will be born.
Let’s take the most obvious case: NVIDIA. It is the most important company in the world in artificial intelligence (AI). It manufactures the video cards (GPU) used by everyone from ChatGPT to biotechnology laboratories, self-driving cars, armies and video games. Access to their GPUs is limited and there are not enough of them.
Let’s imagine that NVIDIA issues a token that represents a unit of computation: for example, 1 token = 1 hour of processing in its AI farms. This token has a direct, concrete and desired utility. Companies will buy it to guarantee future computing; others will resell it when it goes up. Governments will use it to pay for AI services without having to buy their own infrastructure. And users in countries with inflation would find it more reliable to save in NVIDIA tokens than in their local currency.
But there’s something even deeper: by tokenizing its infrastructure, NVIDIA is making it scarce by design.
Because? Because a part of their GPUs will no longer be sold freely, but will be “locked” behind the tokens. That creates artificial scarcity, which in turn drives up the value of the underlying physical asset, namely the GPUs themselves.
Thus, the result is:
• The token becomes more valuable.
• GPUs are becoming more expensive.
• NVIDIA stock rises.
• And the business model changes: they no longer earn just by selling hardware, but by managing access and scarcity.
It is a feedback model: the resource is tokenized → its access is restricted → the value of the resource goes up → the value of the token goes up → the company’s stock goes up. And all without producing a single more unit. It is financial engineering of physical assets, in real time.
Now, not all companies can do this. You have to have highly desired, very scarce, very usable assets. Who else could?
• Energy companies: tokenize electricity. 1 token = 1 MWh of energy. It already exists in pilot tests.
• Oil producers: tokenize barrels. Not futures, but guaranteed physical access. Difficult to implement, but possible.
• Microsoft, Amazon, Google: tokenize server capacity, bandwidth, storage. Everything that is paid in subscriptions today can be fragmented into tokens.
• Tesla: tokenize use of factories, robots, battery technology. Even patent licenses.
And once one does, the others will follow. Because every company that tokenizes something values it, even if it does not sell it. Just by converting it into a monetary base, the asset goes up. And that increases the value of the company, the value of its shares and its market capitalization. It’s as if a wine bar, instead of selling bottles, started selling tickets that entitle you to a glass. And those tickets will be listed on the market. The bottles are worth more for being associated with the system, not for being different.
Central banks can protest, but they can do little. If the token is not presented as a “legal currency”, but as an instrument of functional use, regulatory obstacles are avoided. As I said before: you don’t see bubbles, you see foam. A new, corporate foam, which advances beneath the traditional system, surrounds it and replaces it by dripping.
And that foam, when it grows enough, is going to create real FOMO, fear of being left out. Because we are not talking about tokens for speculation, but rather units that are needed to produce, work, do AI, move energy and build infrastructure. That is, functional money, but without the need for a country to issue it.
The currency of the future may not have heroes or flags. It can have a company logo and be tied to a tangible resource. And most likely, when this happens, it will not happen on Wall Street, but in Taiwan, Singapore, Abu Dhabi or in countries with broken currencies that are no longer afraid to experiment. And from there, it spread like foam.
Things as they are
Mookie Tenembaum addresses international topics like this every week with Horacio Cabak on his podcast The International Observeravailable on Spotify, Apple, YouTube and all platforms.
