Global regulatory models towards an inclusive economy: three facets of emerging digital feudalism

In an era of rapid financial digitalization, the pursuit of an inclusive economy -understood primarily as expanded access to payments, savings, credit, and investment for the unbanked and underserved populations -has become a central policy objective worldwide.Yet this transformation reveals a profound paradox: technologies such as distributed ledger technology (DLT), tokenization, central bank digital currencies (CBDCs), and stablecoins promise democratization of finance, while simultaneously enabling new forms of concentrated power and control.Approximately 1.3-1.4 billion adults globally remain unbanked, despite notable progress in digital financial services.This article examines three distinct regulatory models shaping the digital financial landscape: the European (bureaucratic oversight via MiCA and related acts), the American (private-sector-led innovation with restrictions on retail CBDCs), and the Sino-Indian (state-controlled digital infrastructure).Drawing on neo-institutional theory, we argue that these models, while advancing inclusion, risk fostering variants of emerging digital feudalism -characterized by new hierarchies of "cloud lords," platform dependencies, and diminished individual economic autonomy.Updating our prior work (Baltgailis & Menshikov, 2025), we incorporate fresh evidence from 2025-2026 developments, including Project mBridge reaching MVP stage, the U.S. temporary CBDC ban, explosive growth of China's e-CNY, and the implementation effects of Europe's MiCA framework.We identify institutional parameters that determine outcomes in this "game" of digital finance and propose safeguards to balance innovation, inclusion, and freedom.In the age of tokenization and DLT, money ceases to be a neutral medium of exchange and increasingly becomes an instrument of power.