A UAE investment group and a U.S. blockchain company backed by tech billionaire Eric Schmidt are joining forces to build a public exchange where people can trade physical assets as fractional digital tokens. The venture—between Abu Dhabi's ASK Group and New York-based Keeta—will initially focus on commodities like oil, gold, and copper, the firms said Thursday.
Who's behind it
Keeta is a blockchain infrastructure firm that counts former Google CEO Eric Schmidt among its investors. ASK Group is a diversified investment group headquartered in the United Arab Emirates with holdings in real estate, energy, and finance. The partnership marries Keeta's tokenization technology with ASK Group's access to physical commodity supply chains.
What they're building
The planned exchange will let users buy and sell fractional digital tokens that represent ownership in specific barrels of oil, ingots of gold, or tons of copper. The tokens are meant to be tradeable on a regulated public marketplace, not just in private deals. The companies say the platform will handle the custody and auditing of the underlying physical assets.
Tokenizing commodities isn't new, but a dedicated exchange for fractional trading of physical barrels and metals still has few precedents. The model could lower barriers for smaller investors who can't afford a whole barrel of crude or a gold bar, while giving commodity producers a new way to raise liquidity. Neither ASK Group nor Keeta have said which regulator they plan to work with or when the exchange will go live.
The commodity angle
Oil, gold, and copper are among the most actively traded physical commodities globally, with established pricing benchmarks. The partnership will need to link digital tokens to those benchmarks and ensure that holders can redeem tokens for the underlying physical asset—something that typically requires a warehousing and logistics partner. The companies haven't disclosed any such arrangements yet.
For now, the venture remains at the announcement stage. The next concrete steps—securing a regulatory license, choosing a custody provider, and setting a launch timeline—have not been laid out. Both firms say they expect to share more details in the coming months.
