USD1 and Gaza: A Practical, Market-Led Reconstruction Plan
When Trump’s Board of Peace quietly began exploring a U.S. dollar-backed stablecoin for postwar Gaza in February 2026, many dismissed it as a narrow humanitarian fix for 2.3 million people. Look closer and it reads like a full financial playbook designed to rebuild an economy without banks or functioning currency. Its name, when implemented, is very likely to be USD1.
The Board of Peace was created as the governance framework for Gaza’s postwar transition, asking nations to contribute $1 billion per permanent seat and backed by a $10 billion U.S. pledge for reconstruction. Operational leadership includes Steve Witkoff, Trump’s Special Envoy to the Middle East, who is also co-founder and co-owner of World Liberty Financial, issuer of USD1. That overlap is not a footnote; it is the hinge of the proposal.
As reported by the Financial Times, the stablecoin was described as “not a Gaza Coin or new Palestinian currency, but a means to allow Gazans to transact digitally” — a dollar-pegged token used via digital wallets. Those words match USD1 exactly: GENIUS Act-compliant, custodied by BitGo Bank & Trust, N.A., operating across ten blockchains and already deployed at sovereign scale in Pakistan. That means the instrument can be put to use quickly without inventing new infrastructure or waiting on fresh regulatory frameworks.
Payment tokens are one half of the plan; the other half is asset tokenization, which scales private capital directly into rebuilding projects. Jared Kushner, a Board of Peace director, has pitched a Gaza vision with skyscrapers, data centers, advanced manufacturing and a modern port economy — an estimated $70 billion in construction and infrastructure needs. Those projects are precisely the sort of cash flows that can be structured as tokenized real-world assets.
World Liberty Financial Tokenization, launched at Mar-a-Lago on February 18, 2026, already tokenizes real estate loan revenue from the Trump International Hotel in the Maldives through Securitize, the same platform BlackRock uses for its BUIDL tokenized Treasury fund. WLF Tokenization also tokenizes commodities and private credit via partnerships with Apex Group. The model exists, the tech is live, and early precedents are established.
Apply that structure to Gaza and the mechanics are straightforward: construction loan revenue from Kushner’s projects could be tokenized as RWA instruments through WLF Tokenization and settled in USD1, distributed to global investors holding digital wallets. A territory without banks, a stable currency, correspondent banking relationships, or capital markets could access on-chain capital formation where the stablecoin serves as the monetary base. That approach would mobilize private capital at scale, faster than traditional aid pipelines.
There are real governance questions to answer. Congressional investigators wrote to Zach Witkoff in February 2026, noting that Steve Witkoff — while serving as Middle East envoy — negotiated conditions under which the UAE’s MGX fund deployed $2 billion in USD1 into Binance, creating revenue for WLF and shareholders including the Witkoff family. Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan’s network, with a 49% stake in WLF through Aryam Investment, is a founding Board of Peace member. Those overlaps demand transparency and clear firewalls to avoid even the appearance of self-dealing.
Some critics stress surveillance risks from programmable digital currency and wallet-based monitoring. Those concerns are valid, but a U.S.-chartered custodian like BitGo Bank and compliance with GENIUS Act standards suggest oversight and legal accountability are part of the design. If executed under strict governance, the same visibility that worries some can also prevent corruption and ensure aid reaches intended recipients.
From a Republican viewpoint, this is a conservative case for using markets, property rights, and private capital to rebuild a devastated economy instead of relying only on slow, politicized public aid. The combination of USD1 as a payment layer and tokenized assets as investment vehicles offers speed, scale, and investor protection when paired with robust oversight. Skeptics who call it “King of the World” overlook the pragmatic possibility of leveraging financial innovation for reconstruction while insisting on accountability and American legal safeguards.