Eliminating mercury from artisanal gold mining —
everywhere, permanently.

The Problem

A $65 billion market that works against the people who create it.

Fifteen to twenty million artisanal gold miners produce roughly 20% of the world's gold — with no financial identity, no banking access, no path to a fair price.

Mercury pays today and requires nothing they don't already have. It also recovers an average of just 42.7% of available gold and poisons everything it touches. Many miners know they are losing gold. They use it anyway, because the current system gives them nothing better.

$630 million spent over 50 years. Mercury use unchanged. The problem was never a lack of will. It's a broken system of incentives.

The Protocol

We eliminate mercury from artisanal gold mining by making it economically obsolete — at global scale, through an open protocol built on the coexistence model.

Don't fight mercury. Make it irrelevant.

Buy the ore before mercury touches it. Pay the miner immediately, digitally, fairly. Process it cleanly. Deliver traceable gold to a world that desperately wants it — but can barely find it.

PACTO Gold is not a mining company or a franchise. It is the open protocol and payment infrastructure that makes responsible artisanal gold economically viable for any operator, anywhere — the way the HTTP protocol made the web possible for anyone who wanted to build on it.

PACTO Gold works not because it forces change, but because it aligns the incentives of every participant in the supply chain — from the miner to the refiner to the luxury brand — simultaneously and completely. When every incentive is aligned, the broken system doesn't need to be reformed. It simply becomes obsolete.

Any operator can adopt the protocol and run a community-based ore-buying and processing center. Dynacor has operated this exact model in Peru for decades, generating over $300 million annually with gold meeting LBMA Good Delivery standard. PACTO Gold scales it globally.

How It Works

Four steps. No mercury. Verifiable at every stage.

Mercury-based processing recovers just 42.7% of available gold on average. PACTO Gold recovers 90%+, pays the same day, with no intermediary. When miners see these numbers in their own operation, the conversation changes.

Field Evidence — Peer-Reviewed, April 2026

The Foundation

Decades in the field. Not a theory.

A career documenting exactly what works and what fails in mercury elimination. Sixteen years of community fieldwork across Latin America. This is not a hypothesis — it is a protocol derived from observed reality.

Prof. Marcello Veiga — Science and Technical Director

UBC Emeritus Professor of Mining Engineering. 300+ publications, fieldwork across 35 developing countries, architect of the GEF's global mercury reduction programs. The coexistence methodology at PACTO Gold's core is his life's work.

Toby Pomeroy — Founder

Fifty years in the jewelry industry. Founder of Mercury Free Mining, pioneer in Fairtrade and Fairmined gold, ARM Board member 2010–2024. Sixteen years of fieldwork across Africa and Latin America — the protocol is built on what he has seen firsthand.

Behind every statistic is a person. A miner. A family. A community built around gold — and currently built around mercury. PACTO Gold exists to change what is possible for these people. Not through regulation. Through economic incentives.

Active Site Pipeline

Five geographies under active assessment.

Colombia, Ecuador, Brazil, El Salvador, and Honduras/Costa Rica. Every candidate site sourced through the team's own relationships — no capital required for origination.

El Salvador holds a unique position in PACTO Gold's global strategy. As the world's first Bitcoin-native nation — with Lightning Network infrastructure already live across communities, schools, and commerce — El Salvador is the natural home for PACTO Gold's payment architecture. Miners paid same-day via Lightning, no bank account required, in a country where that infrastructure already exists.

Get Involved

The methodology is proven. The world is ready.

Whether you see a financial opportunity or an operating one — there is a place for you in the PACTO Gold network.