The Alkaimi Financial Ecosystem™ was not built in a single moment, but from hundreds. From before our first patent filings to the Alkaimi Ecosystem™’s start of operations, we spent nearly three decades evaluating, learning, developing during a tumultuous series of real events. From currency crises, bank rescues and the steady loss of purchasing power through political unrest and civil discord during each event we noticed when a problem the world had accepted as permanent. It would in fact only create another question, and a reexamination of that “permanence.”
Each new event created another opportunity to evaluate the status quo, which returned the same result: what was supposed to hold true, wasn’t. What has been accepted as permanent obviously has never been in fact “permanent.” Each new question turned out to have another answer, opposite of the easily implemented solution to it. We call this journey of discovery through disappointment and enlightenment our “we realized” period. Each new problem, new question and new admission we encountered created a new realization that shaped what has become a reality within the Alkaimi™ universe.
1. The old system has a design flaw.
At Pegisai™, we saw that the old system was built for a world in which a few nations dominated trade. The old system was never designed for a world in which many economies grow and prosper. One nation, or a handful of nations, cannot supply the currency the whole world needs and still keep a stable, undebased currency at home.
What this means
The money system in use today was designed when a few nations led world trade. The world the system serves now has many more growing economies, and one nation’s currency cannot carry all of those economies without weakening at home.
The logic
The old system was built for a world in which a few nations dominated trade.
Many more economies now grow and trade: 95 of 143 developing countries depend on commodities the countries sell to the world (UNCTAD).
A currency asked to carry the world’s reserves and trade must be supplied far beyond the needs of the currency’s home economy.
Supplying that currency in volume puts the currency at home under pressure to debase.
The sources and data
The critic’s questions, answered
Is Pegisai saying the dollar is failing?
No. The design limit applies to any single currency asked to carry the world’s reserves and trade. The Bank of England’s 2022 rescue shows the same cycle in a second nation (see reason 4).
2. How the old system extracts “value” is broken.
In the past, empire-holding nations obtained value by extracting assets and resources from less developed nations. Today, the old system extracts “value” from the people who use the currency, through debasement and the inflation tax. The world’s more balanced trading economy has grown beyond single-nation or regional interests. The global trading economy demands more equitable services, access to liquidity and parity in value. The old system fails to provide what the world requires now.
What this means
Value once moved by extraction. Today “value” moves quietly through the currency: when new money is created, purchasing power moves from the people holding money to the issuer of the new money.
The logic
Empire-holding nations once obtained value by extracting assets and resources from less developed nations.
Today the old system extracts “value” through debasement.
Every unit of currency held loses purchasing power at the rate of inflation: the inflation tax.
The lost purchasing power moves to the issuer of the new money and lightens the real weight of the government’s debt.
The sources and data
The critic’s questions, answered
Calling inflation a way of obtaining “value” goes too far.
Economists call the loss the inflation tax: purchasing power moves from the people holding money to the issuer of new money. Americans hold about $23.22 trillion in money (July 2026); at 3.4 percent inflation, about $789 billion of purchasing power is lost in a year (Pegisai arithmetic on Federal Reserve and BLS data). Pegisai estimates about $550 billion of that loss comes from debasement alone ($789 billion × about 70 percent; see Pegisai estimates and arithmetic).
The financial system is fine. Why do you think it’s not?
The record says otherwise.
Banks’ promises total about 44 times every official reserve on earth, counted at face value: $844.6 trillion against about $19.2 trillion (reason 1).
Rescues have come every few years for more than fifty years, and since 2008 every rescue has been paid with created money (reason 3, Figure S2). This irresponsible conduct punishes any person who holds, gets paid in or buys assets priced in the currency the rescue was paid in. While the amount of assets artificially appears to rise year on year, the actual “buying power” of that currency is less with every cycle.
Every major currency lost purchasing power together from 2016 to 2026 (reason 4, Figure S3).
In order to evolve a system, we have to look at the historic facts. Currencies were for a large part of human history (either gold or paper) an expression of power and reach of a ruler / nation.
For parts of history, this was also a function of empires. Since the WW2 era that has largely changed to regional alliances. However, the finance system has not changed and the intertwining of government and banking, as well as other geopolitical interests needed to be removed in order for the health of the economic system to improve. Technology needed to be rationally deployed to include assets into the equation, in an equitable manner.
In order to see the need for this evolution based on all of the factors, certain admissions have to occur. Of those, the most pressing is the fact that debasement has a toxic effect on the holders of currency that is used across international borders, and the chart on lost purchasing power illustrates this as a global issue tied to nations who seek to expand their international economic interests via their currency and banking systems.
3. Value and “currency” are two different things.
We realized we could decouple the value of assets from currency pricing, and measure that value on a neutral value matrix. We realized we could recognize more asset value than the existing liabilities could absorb.
Independent assessments value the world’s natural assets in the quadrillions of dollars: about $33 quadrillion in one 2020 study (Environmental Business International). Nature’s services alone are worth $125 trillion to $145 trillion a year, more than world GDP, and most of that value sits outside markets (Costanza and others, 2014). We estimated more than $4 quadrillion of those assets, about 12 percent of the $33 quadrillion, are viable reserves outside the existing financial system.
We count an asset as viable only when a market for the asset exists, demand for the asset will exist, and value must be created for the asset to transact. Viability also rests on the quality of each asset and the stability of the nation in which the asset sits.
The $4 quadrillion estimate measures scale only. The estimate is not a balance on the Alkaimi ledger. No value enters the Alkaimi ledger until a member bank puts a specific asset through Alkaimi’s value recognition method and an underwriter warrants the asset’s existence, title, quantity and recoverability, one asset at a time (Pegisai estimates and arithmetic).
We realized we could move liquidity creation, settlement and value retention out of the speculative space, by applying technology logically, law rationally and economics rationally.
Published in
The sources and data
The critic’s questions, answered
Well, cryptocurrency and stablecoins are value and currency, right?
No. A stablecoin is a private promise to pay dollars, standing in for a nation’s currency. The issuer backs the promise with Treasury bills and bank deposits, and by law the issuer pays the holder no interest (GENIUS Act, 2025), so the stablecoin loses purchasing power as fast as the dollar does. A cryptocurrency is a claim on no one, with no asset behind the token. Neither is value. Value exists first, in a real asset, and the Alkaimi ledger counts that value in grains, never in a currency.
For more on our position, see The Alkaimi Ecosystem’s position on certain Cryptocurrency Era terms.
4. 100% or more debt to GDP changes a nation into a fiat currency manufacturer.
We realized that once a nation’s government debt reaches 100 percent of the nation’s output, the nation becomes a fiat currency manufacturer, and the nation’s money becomes a product that loses value by design. The DTA™ is a different product, built for the work money fails to do.
The logic
The government borrows to pay the nation’s bills and the interest on the debt already owed.
The central bank buys the new debt with newly created money. Each rescue of a bank or a market is paid the same way.
The currency grows faster than the economy, so every unit already held buys less, including the new money the nation’s banks create by lending. Economists call the condition fiscal dominance: the monetary authority “is forced to create money and tolerate additional inflation” (Sargent and Wallace, 1981).
Since 1972, nations have carried government debt above 100 percent of output for five years or more 46 times. The debt came back below 100 percent 29 times. In 28 of those 29 returns, the return came through debt forgiveness, default or restructuring, inflation above 10 percent a year, an outside bailout or a resource windfall, or the return did not hold. The exception, Comoros, brought the debt down slowly across nine years. Fifteen nations remain above the line in the latest IMF data, each for five years or more (Pegisai analysis of IMF data; the 46 episodes).
Money becomes a product made from debt: a borrower’s loan becomes a bank’s deposit, and a government’s bond becomes a central bank’s new money. At the Federal Reserve’s target of 2 percent a year, the product loses half its value in 35 years. The definition of debasement in Pegisai’s record ends with four words: “The cause is the unit.”
Pegisai holds that scrip currency is a sovereign issue: only a nation’s treasury, through the nation’s central bank as agent, should issue the currency the nation uses. Alkaimi issues no currency, and the DTA is not a currency.
The DTA holds value counted in grains that never move, settles final when the DTA moves, and lets an asset holder draw liquidity without a sale, a loan or new debt. A nation’s DTAs stand beside the nation’s currency, not behind the currency.
The sources and data
IMF, Public Finances in Modern History Database, gross public debt, percent of GDP (December 2025)
IMF, World Economic Outlook, April 2026: general government gross debt and inflation
Pegisai estimates and arithmetic: debt past 100 percent of GDP since 1972, the method
Federal Reserve, Statement on Longer-Run Goals and Monetary Policy Strategy, 25 January 2012
Published in
5. The old system has been out of control for 50 plus years.
The old system has run for more than 50 years since the dollar came off the gold standard in 1971. Pegisai does not fault central banks or governments for that course. From Bretton Woods in 1944, through the 1974 arrangement that recycled oil dollars into US Treasury debt, to the central bank meetings of today, the old system was never built for developing nations growing beyond what one economy could supply in an era without empires. Economist Robert Triffin warned the US Congress of this limit in 1959, and economists still ask whether a “new Triffin dilemma” binds as the world economy grows (Hélène Rey, 2010).
Governments and central banks need tools the old system’s designers never imagined: tools that reduce the tension on the global economic system without catastrophic shocks, without undue burden, and without requiring government economic intervention. We spent nearly three decades building those tools. Member banks have used those tools in wholesale settlement since 1 September 2026.
Published in
6. We could design a more efficient full aspect financial system.
In the old system, liquidity flows from the top down. Central banks create money, banks lend the money into existence, and the new liquidity reaches first those already rich in credit. We realized liquidity could rise from the ground up instead, from the real assets the world already holds. A copper deposit, a gas field or a nation’s harvest could create liquidity where the asset sits, without a sale, without a loan and without new debt.
We realized a nation with ore in the ground and no smelter would no longer have to borrow abroad and repay in a currency the nation does not issue: the ore could fund the smelter, and the debt would never be created. Today, 95 of 143 developing countries depend on commodities, sell at prices set in other nations’ markets and borrow in other nations’ currencies. Granular Value™ counts every nation’s assets in the same grains, so liquidity follows real value, not currency privilege. The old hierarchy inverts: nations rich in real assets become rich in liquidity.
Today the pathway serves wholesale settlement between member banks. The same pathway is designed to reach consumers, once member banks decide together to expand into consumer services.
Published in
7. The Alkaimi system could move whole value more efficiently and safely than the old system’s promise movement.
Between member banks, a settlement is a ledger entry, final when the value moves. No intermediaries, no fees along the route and no float sit between the banks. Value moves across borders and between asset classes without conversion loss, because every recognized value is counted in the same unit and settles at parity.
Efficiency is not only financial but also economic. Our methods, processes and systems are more energy efficient than the blockchain technologies used for cryptocurrency, stablecoin and tokenized bank deposit models. The Alkaimi ledger records each settlement once, under one administrator, with no mining and no network of computers racing to confirm every transaction. Bitcoin alone uses an estimated 138 terawatt-hours of electricity a year, about half a percent of the world’s electricity (Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance). Lower energy use not only reduces the cost of global operations, but also reduces demand on our planet’s already dwindling resources.
Published in
8. The existing financial system needed whole value, not a replacement.
We realized the model gives the existing financial system the tool the existing financial system has lacked. Settlement that leaves no claim needs no credit default swap. A position held whole on the Alkaimi ledger, underwritten and segregated, is never undercollateralized.
Central banks and governments gain a way to reduce the existing financial system’s open claims, credit default swap books and undercollateralized positions without a systemic collapse, an expensive rescue, or any new debt, payment obligation or tax.
Private asset holders gain protection for the value of what the holders own, whether that value sits on the Alkaimi ledger or the holders’ assets simply sit at home. As more settlement moves into recognized value, less new money is needed, and the model is designed to slow the debasement every holder feels.
Published in
9. The rail had to be neutral.
We realized a settlement rail can serve every nation only when the rail is neutral. The dollar rail lost neutrality as access to the dollar system became a tool of policy: a Macau bank was severed in 2005, Iranian banks were cut from settlement messaging in 2012, and a G20 central bank’s reserves were frozen in 2022.
On the Alkaimi ledger, the rules apply to every client and nation alike, activated by the rules and not by politics. No foreign state can freeze another nation’s treasury’s DTAs, and every licensed and regionally chartered member bank complies with every lawful sanction of every nation in which the member bank operates.
Published in
10. David Ricardo was right: nature holds no perfect measure of value.
Economist David Ricardo stated in 1823, “there is no such thing in nature as a perfect measure of value.” Ricardo, a brilliant mind, was impeded by the technology and understanding of the 19th century. Through the use of technology, a more developed understanding of atomic structure and the physics of measures, we realized the measure of value had to be defined instead, the way the meter defines length.
The grain behind Granular Value is fixed. Currencies, commodities and assets are counted against the grain, and the grain is never priced against them. Ricardo’s work led us to our final destination. Thank you, David.
What this means
Every measure of value in use today is a currency or a commodity, and both move. Ricardo saw in 1823 that nature offers no perfect measure of value; a defined measure, the way the meter defines length, answers the problem.
The logic
David Ricardo searched for an invariable measure of value in the last paper Ricardo wrote, in 1823.
Ricardo concluded that nature holds no perfect measure of value.
A measure can be defined instead of found, the way the meter defines length.
The grain behind Granular Value is that defined measure: currencies, commodities and assets are counted against the grain, and the grain is never priced against currencies, commodities or assets.
The sources and data
David Ricardo, “Absolute Value and Exchangeable Value” (1823), in The Works and Correspondence of David Ricardo, Volume IV, edited by Piero Sraffa, Cambridge University Press, 1951
The critic’s questions, answered
A defined measure of value is just another currency.
The grain is not currency, it’s a benchmark, independent of any other asset or similar benchmark because it’s sub-atomic and the invariable measure Ricardo searched for. Because of it, the DTA which contains this measured value isn’t priced in a currency either. Nothing in the granular measure is speculative, nor is it tied in pricing or peg to any other item previously used. Attempting to declare it a currency is an act of denial and has no basis in fact, reason or law. (Pegisai, The Ecosystem).
This page contains some forward-looking statements. Read Pegisai’s statement on forward-looking statements.