PACTO Gold — Investor & Partner Brief

The Moment

20 million miners. 100 million lives. Artisanal gold supports entire families and communities. The 20 million people mining it are the breadwinners for an estimated 100 million dependents worldwide — yet less than 3% of what they mine reaches LBMA refiners.

For the first time in history, the economics exist to make mercury in artisanal gold mining obsolete — everywhere, permanently.

Fifteen to twenty million artisanal miners work outside the formal economy, dependent on intermediaries who control price, timing, and access. The communities are dying for something better. After two decades of fieldwork, that is not a theory — it is what we have seen with our own eyes, and what Professor Veiga has documented across 35 developing countries over a career spanning fifty years.

The methodology is proven. The demand is real. The world is ready.

The Insight That Changes Everything

For thirty years the world has tried to stop miners from using mercury. Governments. NGOs. The United Nations. Over a billion dollars spent. All failed — because they fought the economics instead of fixing them.

Mercury is cheap, fast, and accessible — and it recovers only 30–50% of available gold, leaving the rest in the tailings. Many miners know this, others sense it. They use it anyway, because it pays today and requires no infrastructure they have access to in the current system.

PACTO Gold doesn't fight mercury. It makes mercury irrelevant.

Buy the ore before mercury touches it. Pay the miner immediately, digitally, fairly. Process it cleanly. Deliver traceable, responsible gold to a world that desperately wants it but can barely find it. Dynacor has been doing this quietly in Peru for decades — over $300 million annually, profitable, meeting LBMA Good Delivery standard. The economics work. The model works. Approximately 25 processing plants operating on the coexistence model have been implemented across Latin America with documented results.

The Open Protocol

PACTO Gold is the open standard that makes responsible gold possible everywhere.

Any operator anywhere in the world who wants to run a mercury-free community-based ore-buying and processing center can adopt the PACTO Gold protocol. They get the payment infrastructure, the compliance framework, the supply chain transparency, the LBMA pathway, the community relationship methodology — all worked out. They make money. Their miners make more money and gain financial agency. Their gold commands premium prices.

The way the HTTP protocol made the web possible for anyone who wanted to build on it — not owned by anyone, used by everyone, strengthened by every participant — PACTO Gold is the open infrastructure for responsible artisanal gold.

PACTO Gold earns a maximum 1% transaction fee on every gram that flows through the network. As the network grows and more hubs come online, that fee is designed to decrease — rewarding scale with lower cost to operators, and ensuring the protocol remains the most economical path to responsible gold for everyone who builds 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.

This is infrastructure for a more just world — designed to be adopted freely, built to outlast any single organization, and scaled by anyone who sees the future we see.

The Foundation

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 and twenty years of mercury elimination fieldwork through Mercury Free Mining — a nonprofit with deep operational relationships in artisanal mining communities from Colombia to Ghana. Pioneer in Fairtrade and Fairmined gold. Board member, Alliance for Responsible Mining 2010–2024.

The protocol is fully developed. Five candidate hub geographies are under active assessment: Colombia, Ecuador, Brazil, El Salvador, and Honduras/Costa Rica. The pipeline is developing through the team's own relationships — not requiring capital for site origination.

Seed Round Now Open

PACTO Gold is raising its seed round to deploy the first protocol hub and prove the model at scale. Investors participate through Kingfisher Gold Resources LLC. We are seeking investors and operating partners who see what we see: a $65+ billion market where less than 3% of product reaches premium buyers — and a proven, replicable protocol to change that.

Seed Round: $2M — First hub deployment and community coexistence agreement, proof-of-protocol documentation, LBMA pathway validation, and supply chain transparency infrastructure.

Gold near historic highs. Premium refiners paying $50–100/oz over spot for traceable, responsibly mined gold — supply barely exists. 150+ Minamata Convention signatories with compliance requirements and no scalable solution. The market is waiting.

If you see the same opportunity — we should talk.

We review all inquiries personally. Toby will be in touch directly.

Contact

Toby Pomeroy | Founder, PACTO Gold