Will 2026 mark a historical inflection point where the physical permanence of land and the digital liquidity powered by blockchain finally converges into a single unified asset class? For centuries, land ownership was defined by paper deeds, local jurisdictional boundaries and high barriers to entry that excluded all but the wealthiest individuals and corporate investors. However, tokenisation and the adoption of stablecoin payment rails have fundamentally reconfigured the architecture of ownership. Billionaires in the US, such as Stan Kroenke and the Emmerson family, continue to amass millions of acres of physical territory, as can be seen by largest private land acquisitions of 2026. However, the mechanism of that ownership is becoming increasingly fragmented, programmable and accessible to a global retail audience as we see the rise of blockchain-powered tokenisation on property rights.

In the US, the hierarchy of private land ownership is undergoing a significant shift, with the 19th annual Land Investment Expo revealing that land has transitioned from a purely agricultural or industrial asset into a premier defensive store of value for the ultra-wealthy. Billionaires are increasingly utilising land as a hedge against the volatility of public markets, persistent inflationary pressures and the shifting tides of global geopolitics. Investors such as Stan Kroenke, the sports magnate whose portfolio includes the Los Angeles Rams and Arsenal FC, has emerged as America’s largest private landowner in early 2026. His ascent was triggered by the acquisition of more than 937,000 acres of ranch land in New Mexico from the heirs of Henry Singleton, the founder of Teledyne. This transaction, finalised in late 2025, pushed Kroenke’s total holdings to an estimated 2.7 million acres - a footprint roughly equivalent to two million American football fields. Without doubt, Kroenke’s strategy demonstrates a shift toward multi-use land management where traditional cattle ranching is paired with large-scale urban development projects, such as his ongoing work around Ball Arena in Denver.

The largest private landowners in the United States (2026)

Source: investmentnews, landreport, agriculture

Meanwhile, the Emmerson family, through its firm, Sierra Pacific Industries, continues to dominate the timber sector, holding vast tracts of land across California, Oregon and Washington. Its management strategy has increasingly focused on sustainable forestry, with significant investments in replanting and wildlife habitat protection to align with modern environmental standards. Similarly, media mogul, John Malone, and CNN founder, Ted Turner, have maintained multi-million-acre portfolios for decades although Turner has specifically pivoted toward conservation, designating large portions of his land as protected habitats. Beyond the US, the scale of private landholding is even more pronounced in regions such Australia. The Kidman family, descendants of the “Cattle King”, Sir Sidney Kidman, recently listed a holding encompassing 11 million hectares, a landmass more than three quarters the size of England. These vast pastoral empires highlight the enduring value of land as the ultimate tangible asset in an increasingly digitised world. And whilst individual billionaires capture the headlines, institutional landowners manage the most contiguous blocks of American territory. The Weyerhaeuser Company remains the pre-eminent corporate landowner, with 10.5 million acres in the US and an additional 2 million acres in Canada. In 2026, Weyerhaeuser’s strategy has evolved into a natural capital model where revenue is generated not only from timber but also from carbon sequestration, renewable energy leases (solar and wind) and natural gas extraction.

Major institutional landowners and management strategies

Source: landapp

Rayonier, which operates as a Real Estate Investment Trust (REIT), manages 2.7 million acres across the Southern US and the Pacific Northwest. Following its merger with PotlatchDeltic Corporation in late 2025, Rayonier has focused on providing public access through recreational leases for hunting, fishing and hiking, further diversifying its income streams. This trend toward multifunctional land usage reflects a broader economic shift where land is valued for its ecological services as much as its physical output. In addition, we are seeing tokenisation of real estate, a process that converts physical property rights into digital tokens on a blockchain. This technology allows high-value assets such as the ranches owned by Stan Kroenke or the timberlands of Weyerhaeuser to be divided into thousands of fractional shares. For the first time, a retail investor in Berlin or Bangkok can own a share of an American ranch for as little as $50, bypassing the traditional bureaucratic hurdles of international property acquisition. In particular, tokenisation addresses the three primary weaknesses of traditional real estate: illiquidity, high entry barriers and transparent transaction histories. By representing ownership as digital tokens, the market has created a liquid version of land that can be traded 24/7 on global marketplaces. The legal architecture for this shift typically involves the creation of a special purpose vehicle (SPV), which holds the actual legal title to the property; the SPV then issues digital tokens to investors that represent shares or membership units in the entity. In essence, this structure ensures that token holders have a legally enforceable claim to rental income, capital appreciation and governance rights.

Key tokenisation platforms and their 2026 progressions

Source: zoniqx

Interestingly, platforms such as Zoniqx have moved beyond residential properties to target the $500 billion commercial real estate market, so utilising AI-driven compliance to ensure that cross-border investments meet the specific regulations of over 100 countries. Similarly, RealT has successfully tokenised over $150 million in multifamily units, providing investors with daily stablecoin dividends processed automatically via smart contracts. So, as the physical world undergoes tokenisation, the digital world is simultaneously embracing stablecoin payment rails. Physical permanence of land and the digital liquidity of the blockchain have finally converged into a single unified asset class. Historically, land ownership was defined by paper deeds and high entry barriers that excluded most retail investors, but the maturation of real-world asset (RWA) tokenisation has reconfigured this architecture. By converting property rights into digital tokens, fractional ownership has lowered entry barriers to as little as $, £, €, Yen500, allowing a global audience to hold shares in assets once reserved for the ultra-wealthy. In turn, for real estate investors, this shift transforms property from a static, illiquid asset into a programmable, liquid instrument:

• enhanced liquidity - tokenisation allows investors to sell portions of their equity as digital tokens for immediate cash flow, bypassing lengthy T+2 settlement cycles for near-real-time atomic settlement.
• diversification - retail investors can now build global portfolios, owning a piece of a London skyscraper and a New York penthouse simultaneously, without needing millions in upfront capital.
• programmable dividends - smart contracts automate “boring” operational tasks like dividend payouts and compliance checks, ensuring rental income is distributed to token holders in real-time.

However, whilst tokenisation democratises ownership, it does not eliminate financial risk, it repackages it, often obscuring economic and counterparty vulnerabilities behind a veneer of automation that can amplify market volatility. Furthermore, in the future, AI may well create a deflationary wave as robots replace humans and productivity soars, meaning there is the possibility that governments could embark on huge quantitative easing as they did at the height of concerns over COVID -19. This could also lead to a fall in the value of some assets, but real estate (that has a finite supply) could prove to be a safe harbour - or at least that is what some billionaires seem to be staking on. Hence, they have been ‘buying up’ whilst they can!

This article first appeared in Digital Bytes (18th of February, 2026), a weekly newsletter by Jonny Fry of Team Blockchain.