Toto Finance seeks $5m from Cardano treasury for tokenised copper reserve
Toto Finance, a company that converts physical commodities into blockchain tokens, has asked Cardano's community treasury for 22 million ADA, worth roughly $5 million, to fund a Cardano Strategic Copper Reserve. Voting on the proposal closes on 15 November.
About two-thirds of the budget would buy exchange-grade copper held in a COMEX-approved warehouse near New Orleans, with a token called CuTT representing each verified pound. The metal would be held for 18 to 24 months and sold over the following year, with net proceeds and unused funds returned to the treasury by month 36. The remaining third covers storage, insurance, audits, oversight and Toto's work. Under the proposal's assumptions, copper bought at $6.73 a pound would need to reach about $10.06, a rise of roughly 49.4%, to recover the withdrawal if the full budget is spent and ADA's dollar price is unchanged. The proposal states there is no guarantee the treasury recovers its original ADA.
Monty Metzger, Toto's founder and chairman, told CoinDesk that bullish scenarios project copper appreciating about 30% a year, which would deliver 69% over 24 months and potentially clear the break-even threshold, while cautioning that commodity prices can also decline. He said Toto takes no profit from the proposal and attributed much of the extra spending to Cardano's constitutional requirements for oversight and auditing. The budget allocates 2.64 million ADA to Toto for technology and project management plus a 441,732 ADA execution fee, and allows up to 278,291 ADA through a margin on third-party storage and insurance invoices, taking potential payments to about 3.36 million ADA, or roughly 15% of the request. Toto would retain commercial rights to the platform and income from its separately funded CuTT business.
Metzger said the company aims to scale the product to $5 billion in tokenised copper assets and that Cardano could become its flagship showcase. Tokens would first be minted on Ethereum and locked in a bridge that issues matching tokens on Cardano; the contracts and their security reviews remain future work. Toto would hold legal title to the copper, and Metzger said an independent collateral agent and first-priority security arrangements would protect the treasury if the company failed, without naming the agent.
The request arrives with Cardano's spending room largely committed. A 500 million ADA withdrawal cap runs to about July 2027, and 457.4 million ADA had been used as of 16 October, meaning the copper proposal would consume just over half the remaining allowance; under existing rules, returning proceeds would not replenish it. In late May the Cardano Foundation's 7.8 million ADA request for its 2026 summit drew 65.21% support, short of the two-thirds required, and the event was cancelled. Toto is asking for nearly three times that amount.
