Altura, a DeFi protocol founded by former Fidelity and PwC staff, is launching an onchain gold arbitrage vault aimed at retail investors and targeting about 20% annualized returns, the company said in a Thursday release shared with Cointelegraph.
The product pools user deposits into a vault that repeatedly recycles capital through short-duration physical gold trades. Unlike platforms that simply tokenize passive exposure to gold prices, Altura says it is tokenizing the arbitrage process itself — packaging an institutional-style trading strategy onchain for retail access.
Altura has raised $4 million and says it has already facilitated movement of roughly 185 kilograms of gold, equal to about $28.5 million in cumulative transaction volume. Co-founder and COO Matthew Pinnock described the goal as making an institutional commodities strategy accessible to smaller investors.
The launch coincides with elevated spot-gold levels after an all-time high above $5,300 an ounce in January, and signals a shift in tokenized real-world assets (RWAs) toward offering active, yield-focused strategies rather than passive commodity exposure.
Altura says the strategy mirrors trades historically used by institutional commodities desks, which have been largely inaccessible to retail due to high capital needs, legal complexity and counterparty risk. Gold purchased by trading partner Inessa is tokenized at acquisition; those tokens are escrowed during each trade and custody transitions are recorded with dual cryptographic signatures. Depositors do not hold direct title to bullion but receive exposure to returns generated by the trade flow.
Execution depends on offchain partners: Aurellion Labs and Inessa, with logistics and verification supported by air-cargo specialist Zeal Global. Altura says the strategy is structured to be close to delta-neutral, with trade terms agreed before logistics so returns arise from price discrepancies between counterparties rather than directional bets on gold. Each arbitrage cycle typically completes within one to two days, allowing frequent capital recycling and limiting exposure to spot moves; Pinnock noted yields would compress if pricing inefficiencies narrow.
The launch arrives amid growing interest in real-world DeFi yields. Tokenized asset and RWA protocols reached about $17 billion in total value locked in December 2025, according to DefiLlama. At the same time, a joint report from RWA.io and Veritas Protocol found losses from onchain operational failures in tokenized RWA markets rose to $14.6 million in the first half of 2025 — a 143% increase year-over-year — underscoring the risks tied to complex offchain structures.
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