Mining moves trillions of dollars' worth of commodities every year, but the system used to finance, trade and bring those resources to market has remained largely unchanged for the past 30 years. That was the backdrop for Toto Finance Founder and Chairman Monty C. M. Metzger's keynote at Mining Forum Americas 2026 in Colorado Springs, on how tokenization could open a new financing pathway for the industry. The full keynote is available as a webcast on the Mining Forum Americas site.
This year's forum was the largest in its history, with 206 presenting companies from 34 countries and a combined market capitalization of around $1.35 trillion, according to the organizers. While mining assets such as gold are always a core focus of Mining Forum Americas, copper made a particularly strong impact at this year's event. New copper mines can take close to two decades to go from discovery to first production, and with demand for commodities rising, the industry has a big problem ahead.
In his keynote, Metzger argued that the industry cannot solve the problems of the future with the solutions of the past. At the center of his address was one question. Can mining companies raise capital against verified reserves and future production from a broader pool of investors than traditional financing allows? In Toto Finance's view, the answer is yes, and commodities are ready for their Amazon moment.
A Market Structure Built for Another Era
Commodity markets remain fragmented, with producers, capital and buyers often separated by layers of intermediaries and complex financing structures. The information needed to value a resource is often scattered across geological reports, trading houses, brokers and private databases, making it harder for investors and buyers to assess an asset's quality, availability and potential value. At the same time, multiple intermediaries often sit between resource owners and buyers, adding cost, complexity and time to the process.
The process is slow and cumbersome, and all the while the tools to actually turn future production into capital already exist. Offtake agreements, royalties and streaming have funded mines for decades, but they are negotiated privately, one deal at a time, limiting who can participate. This leaves room for more open, scalable models of financing.
Commodities' Amazon Moment
Tokenization offers a way to streamline that structure. When verified reserves, future production, and physical supply are tokenized, the entire journey of a commodity can be tracked on one digital record, from financing and trading through to final delivery. Investors can fund future production directly, and industrial buyers can secure supply straight from producers. Producers can raise capital without diluting shareholders, taking on new debt or committing a share of production for the life of the mine, while payments can settle in U.S. dollar stablecoins within seconds.
Cutting out middlemen brings more efficiency to the market and creates higher margins for the people producing and buying the metal. That is what an Amazon moment looks like for commodities: a direct and digital route from mine to market.
Toto Finance is building that route as a mine-to-market platform for tokenized commodities, starting with copper. Copper Now (COPTT) tokenizes verified physical copper that is ready to be traded, while Copper in Future (COPTTR) represents future copper production, giving mines a new way to raise capital against output that has yet to reach the market. With a platform built around connecting resources, capital and buyers, Metzger argues that Toto Finance is uniquely positioned to explore where the traditional mining model is falling short, and how new digital infrastructure could help modernize it.
The internet has shown that you don't always need to own an asset to make it more accessible. Some of the biggest platforms of the digital economy succeeded by building networks around assets they didn't own themselves, connecting people to cars, homes, accommodation and other services without owning the underlying supply. Uber does not own the cars on its network, and Airbnb does not own the homes listed on its platform.
Tokenization creates a similar opportunity for commodities. With Toto Finance, buyers do not need to own the mines or the resources themselves to make them easier to access, finance, and trade. Toto Finance's bigger vision is to build a global digital network that connects mines, capital and buyers, creating a more direct route between the physical resources and the people who need them.
The Waves of Tokenization
Metzger describes tokenization as unfolding in three waves. Stablecoins built the rails for money, tokenized stocks and funds are bringing markets on-chain, and the third and largest wave moves physical assets, or matter, on-chain. Mining has spent decades doing things the same way, and that third wave gives it the chance to build something new. For Toto Finance, it starts with copper.
Watch the full keynote on the Mining Forum Americas webcast.