By Damian Fernandez
This article forms Part 4 – an update – to our series on Trump’s GENIUS Act and the Global Financial Reset. Parts 1, 2 and 3 examined how the GENIUS Act dismantles the Deep State’s monetary architecture and opens the path for sovereign nations to leverage dollar-backed stablecoins without surrendering control and it postulated how Malaysia & ASEAN could turn a tariff crisis into a $Trillion geo-economic pivot by launching a US$ stablecoin under the Genius Act. They can be found here :
Since those publications two major developments have reinforced our thesis:
(1) Donald Trump’s financial strategy has moved from theory to implementation — embedding blockchain-backed U.S. Treasuries at the heart of America’s renewed global dominance; and
(2) BlackRock CEO Larry Fink’s declaration that all currencies and financial assets will soon be digitized signals that global finance is already moving toward tokenized, real-time settlement systems.
Together, these moves confirm and amplify the central argument of our earlier analysis: that the world is witnessing a strategic remapping of financial power, with Malaysia and ASEAN uniquely positioned to seize the initiative.
1. Trump’s Regime Change in the Global Financial Order.
For decades, the global financial order has been anchored by one engine: the U.S. Treasury market. Every major economy held it, every central bank depended on it, and the vast web of banks and funds around it — led by BlackRock, Vanguard, and their peers — turned that dependency into control.
Now, in 2025, that machine is being re-coded. The GENIUS Act, quietly signed by Donald Trump earlier this year, forces all U.S.-linked stablecoins to be backed by U.S. dollars or short-term Treasuries. At first glance, it sounds technical; in reality, it’s a geopolitical reconfiguration of debt ownership and liquidity.
Every time a stablecoin issuer mints a new token, it must hold a corresponding dollar or Treasury bill. The result: digital capital flows straight back into the Treasury system, reinforcing U.S. fiscal power. Stablecoins, once the rebels of finance, have become its new lifeblood.
Trump’s brilliance lies in his subtlety. Instead of tearing down the global order, he’s re-engineering its wiring.
By legally binding the digital economy to the Treasury, he ensures that the next generation of global liquidity — the trillions moving through crypto and tokenized assets — still flows through Washington’s pipes. The world may think it’s escaping the dollar through blockchain; in fact, it’s getting pulled deeper into it.
Trump’s objective isn’t merely economic — it’s political. He’s stripping the Deep State of its monopoly over financial mediation. For decades, globalists used opaque systems — offshore leverage, derivatives, and custodial intermediaries — to blur the line between public debt and private profit. By moving the system on-chain and tying every digital dollar to real reserves, Trump forces transparency into the one arena the Deep State could always hide in: money itself.
But here lies the paradox. Larry Fink, the CEO of BlackRock and a man many critics describe as the “architect of the Deep State’s balance sheet,” is echoing Trump’s very language — at least on the surface.
Fink predicts the “digitization of all currencies and assets into digital wallets,” claiming it will “change the plumbing of global finance.” He’s not wrong. But while Trump wants digitization to reclaim sovereignty, Fink wants it to entrench control.
BlackRock’s goal isn’t to liberate finance; it’s to own the rails. If every asset and currency is tokenized, the entity controlling those tokens’ settlement infrastructure becomes the central switchboard of global capital. That’s the prize Fink is after.
In his vision, BlackRock and its peers wouldn’t just manage portfolios — they would manage the protocols of money itself.
Thus, the coming conflict is not ideological; it’s structural. Both Trump and Fink are pushing for a fully digitized global system. The question is: who owns the on/off switch?
Trump’s Plan: Recapture the system under U.S. sovereign control, linking every tokenized dollar to a Treasury-audited reserve.
Fink’s Plan: Privatize the system through asset-manager custodianship, making governments dependent on corporate pipes.
To the casual observer, they’re allies; in truth, they’re rivals fighting on the same battlefield — the digital dollar.
If Fink’s vision prevails, digital currency becomes the next iteration of global corporatism — efficient, surveilled, and profit-maximized for those at the top.
If Trump’s vision prevails, the U.S. reasserts fiscal sovereignty, dismantles the Deep State’s private leverage machine, and re-anchors the world’s financial order in transparent, dollar-backed liquidity.
Should Fink resist, Trump has levers to pull. Regulators can stall or revoke approvals for tokenization projects, weaponize antitrust scrutiny, and redirect pension and government mandates to American-first asset managers.
More powerfully, Trump can use political narrative — painting BlackRock as the unelected banker behind every lost American job. In the populist era, that is lethal. Fink’s newfound enthusiasm for blockchain may therefore be less conviction than capitulation — a realization that survival requires joining the revolution rather than blocking it.
Because Trump doesn’t need to dismantle BlackRock; he only needs to make it redundant in the new financial order.
What the world is witnessing is the financial equivalent of regime change.
The dollar is not dying; it’s mutating.
The GENIUS Act fuses the world’s most powerful currency with the world’s most adaptable technology. Every stablecoin minted under this regime strengthens the Treasury’s balance sheet, expands the dollar’s reach, and ties global liquidity tighter to U.S. law.
This is why China, Russia, and BRICS are scrambling for alternatives — and why their digital yuan or gold-linked token plans face near-insurmountable barriers. Once the dollar becomes programmable and fully auditable, it’s game over for opaque state-run systems. The U.S. doesn’t need to block BRICS; it will out-innovate them into irrelevance.
And here is where it all comes full circle.
As America retools its financial system to reclaim dominance, ASEAN has the rarest window in modern history — a chance to become co-architect rather than bystander. Malaysia, sitting at the crossroads of trade, fintech, and diplomacy, is uniquely placed to lead that pivot. Even as analysts debate the GENIUS Act, few have noticed that another drama is quietly unfolding — one that could redefine Malaysia’s role in the U.S.–Asia balance. Nvidia’s multi-billion-dollar investment in Malaysia is being discussed largely in terms of data centres and AI infrastructure. But to stop there is to miss the point. This move is not merely about technology — it is about positioning – political and economic.
To all the critics of the Malaysia–U.S. trade deal — and those screaming that Anwar Ibrahim and Tengku Zafrul have surrendered Malaysia’s economic sovereignty — here lies the true answer:
Sovereignty is not lost – the trade deal could pay-off big time – if only Malaysia recognises it!
By leading ASEAN’s alignment with Trump’s GENIUS Act framework and positioning itself as the regional hub for U.S.-backed stablecoin issuance, Malaysia can turn this geopolitical transition into a sovereignty dividend.
It’s not submission. It’s strategy.
And it could mark the dawn of Southeast Asia’s Golden Age.
