InfiniGold, leading commodity digitization and registry service, incubated out of Australia’s Rozetta Institute that is pioneering the tokenization of commodities on private and public blockchains, has raised $6.25 million AUD in a Series B funding round.
The company also rebrands to a new name, Trovio, reflecting the agnostic nature of their technology which can be applied to a trove of different precious metals and commodity assets.
The round was co-led by Swiss-based Blockchain Valley Ventures and Amherst Holdings Ltd, a Hong Kong-based ultra-high net worth family office, and supported by Integra Partners, the ex-DYMON Asia Capital team based in Singapore, together with several seed investors who also took part in the round.
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The international VC funding from leading Family Offices and VC Funds will be used by Trovio for the continued build-out of its commodities digitization platform. The platform-as-a-service solution, CommoditiesPass, enables the commodities industry to infinitely fractionalise their physical assets, interface seamlessly across service providers, and take their products directly to the market, offering producers and distributors greater depth of liquidity and the opportunity to cap extortionate fees by disintermediating financial service providers.
CommoditiesPass is changing the commodities landscape. The Trovio platform gives B2C and B2B participants seamless access to global commodity markets, while also interfacing directly with public and private blockchains. Moving across registries gives Trovio’s partners the ability to improve supply chain transparency, access new sources of finance and tackle previously unattainable markets.
Trovio will also use the proceeds to continue to grow its asset tokenization business, after launching the world’s first token backed by a government-guaranteed asset, PMGT, and its digital asset market making functionality, Digital Exchange Technologies (DET). More recently, Trovio, as the Commodities Digitization member of the Universal Protocol Alliance, launched the world’s first tradable carbon token on a public blockchain, UPCO2.
“The tokenization of physical commodities offers a significant opportunity to an old-world industry. It enables new service providers across trade finance to offer greater clarity on supply chain transparency, opening up new markets while disintermediating existing financial service providers. Trovio’s platform, CommoditiesPass, interfaces directly with both private and public blockchains and enables our partners to remain focused on their core business without having to experience their own Kodak Moment,’’ said Jon Deane, CEO of Trovio.
Traditional markets have become over-reliant and increasingly exposed to these costly go-betweens due to geographical and jurisdictional restrictions, which have prevented refineries and other producers from scaling their distribution.
“Trovio, via CommoditiesPass and it’s Asset Tokenization Business, is a subversion to these rent-seekers allowing the Commodities Industry to cut out unnecessary middlemen while leveraging new technologies to preserve capital and increase liquidity,” Deane added.
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Deane has over 15 years experience leading global market businesses, as well as individually managing large complex risk positions for international investment banks, including JP Morgan and UBS AG. Prior to InfiniGold, he was Managing Director, and Head of Asia Commodities Trading for JP Morgan, focusing primarily on ferrous metals, physical bullion, financial energy, base metals, and agricultural derivatives.
As an advisory committee member for the Digital Finance CRC bid, Deane works closely with all aspects of Business in the pioneering of research and eventual commercialisation of the emerging digital finance sector. Trovio has already demonstrated the broad appeal of their solution, through a successful implementation with their biggest client, The Perth Mint, a distributor of $18 billion (AUD) in precious metals worldwide, one of the world’s top gold producers, and statutory authority of the Government of Western Australia.
Leeor Groen, Principal at BVV, commented: “We are delighted to back Jon Deane and the team at Trovio which has already proven itself to be the global market leader in the digital commodities industry. With Switzerland being one of the largest commodity hubs in the world and having a longstanding relationship to gold, we see a huge opportunity for Trovio to roll-out its solution and help bring transparency to the industry.” Whilst gold has been the company’s initial focus, its proprietary digitization technology is asset agnostic. It can be applied to any commodity or asset, including silver, platinum, carbon, iron ore, steel, and a swathe of other assets.
Trovio is also working on their own value-added products, with a product suite of ESG compliant commodities on the way, as well as leading digital market-making solutions with Digital Exchange Technologies. Additionally, there are a number of B2B integrations in the pipeline with clients in India, Europe and Africa, providing standalone on-ramps, providing these clients with the ability to touch these markets where they’ve never participated before.
