Update March 30, 1:20 p.m. UTC: This article has been updated to include a section on the wider tokenized commodities market.
In a significant move for digital asset markets, Trilitech, a London-based development firm dedicated to the Tezos blockchain ecosystem, officially launched Metals.io on Monday. The new platform enables trading in tokenized physical commodities, marking an expansion from its initial focus on uranium to include assets like gold and a basket of strategic metals.
Metals.io: Broadening Access to Strategic Commodities
Metals.io builds directly upon the foundation of Uranium.io, a retail-focused uranium marketplace that Trilitech debuted in December 2024 on Etherlink, Tezos’ Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM)-compatible layer-2 network. At launch, Metals.io will list several tokenized assets: the existing xU3O8 token (representing physical uranium), tokenized gold, and the RARE token from Noemon Tech, which is described as a basket of strategic metals.
The launch is framed as a response to intensifying investor interest in materials critical to industrial applications and the infrastructure build-out for artificial intelligence. “One of the founding principles behind the launch of that platform was to level the playing field by making a previously inaccessible critical asset widely available to all investors,” said Ben Elvidge, Head of Commercial Applications at Trilitech, in a conversation with Cointelegraph.
Elvidge noted that approximately 9,000 retail investors have acquired the xU3O8 token since Uranium.io’s inception, demonstrating early traction for democratizing access to a market traditionally dominated by institutions with multi-million-dollar entry barriers. This push into commodities has seen institutional support grow; in August 2025, digital asset custodian Hex Trust integrated with Etherlink to provide custody for tokenized uranium, while payment provider Transak partnered in January to allow retail purchases via card or crypto with a minimum investment as low as $10.
The Strategic Case for Uranium and Tokenization
The rationale behind both Uranium.io and now Metals.io centers on uranium’s role in nuclear energy—a reliable, low-carbon power source seen as essential for meeting surging electricity demands, particularly from AI data centers. By tokenizing physical uranium, the platforms aim to introduce price transparency, liquidity, and fractional ownership to a notoriously opaque and illiquid over-the-counter (OTC) market.
The Broader Surge in Tokenized Commodities
Metals.io enters a rapidly growing segment. According to data from analytics platform RWA.xyz, the total market capitalization of tokenized commodities peaked at $7.7 billion on March 6, 2025, before settling near $7 billion at the time of Metals.io’s launch. Tokenized gold products dominate this landscape. Tether Gold (XAUT) holds a 38% share, valued at approximately $2.5 billion, while Paxos Gold (PAXG) accounts for 34%, or about $2.2 billion.
Julio Moreno, Head of Research at CryptoQuant, linked the rising demand to macroeconomic factors. In a March 5 report, he cited tariff-related uncertainty, a higher interest rate environment, and strengthened safe-haven demand as key drivers. “Crypto exchanges are becoming global venues for TradFi derivatives,” Moreno observed, highlighting a structural shift where digital asset platforms are increasingly hosting tokenized representations of traditional finance instruments.
Tokenized commodities’ total market capitalization. Source: RWA.xyz
Crypto Exchanges Accelerate Tokenized Asset Offerings
The trend is not isolated to specialized platforms like Metals.io. Major crypto exchanges are actively launching tokenized and derivative products. On March 20, Coinbase introduced stock perpetual futures for eligible non-U.S. users, offering 24/7 access to equities. Competitors Binance and Kraken have similarly expanded tokenized perpetual futures trading for international markets.
Furthermore, the regulatory landscape is evolving to accommodate these products. Vienna-based crypto broker Bitpanda recently unveiled Vision Chain, an Ethereum layer-2 designed specifically for European banks and fintechs to issue tokenized assets under the EU’s Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) regulation and the MiFID II directive, signaling growing institutional comfort with compliant tokenization.
This convergence of blockchain technology, traditional commodity markets, and evolving financial regulation suggests that tokenized real-world assets (RWAs), particularly in the commodities sector, are transitioning from niche experiments to
