Monetary Metals Review

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Monetary Metals is a Scottsdale, Arizona based financial firm that lets gold and silver owners earn interest paid in more gold and silver, instead of dollars.

Founded by economist Keith Weiner, the company runs what it calls the Gold Yield Marketplace, matching investors who hold bullion with jewelers, miners, refiners, and manufacturers who need physical metal to run their businesses.

Rates on the platform have historically ranged from about 2% to 19% annually depending on the structure, and the company reports more than 80 funded transactions across five continents to date.

Below is a full breakdown of how the platform works, what it costs, who it serves, and how it fits into a gold and silver market that just posted some of the wildest price action in a decade.

Key Takeaways

• Monetary Metals pays yield in physical ounces through gold leases (roughly 2% to 5% annually) and gold bonds (roughly 6% to 19% annually), not in dollars.
• The company has completed more than 80 funded deals and reports a weighted average return of 3.93% on active leases and 5.89% across all active leases and bonds combined.
• Gold and silver are trading near record levels in 2026, which makes the case for a productive yield on idle metal more relevant than it was a few years ago, but it also raises counterparty and liquidity questions worth understanding before signing up.

What the Company Actually Does

Most people who buy gold or silver do one of two things with it: they stash it in a safe deposit box, or they pay a vault operator to store it for them. Either way, the metal sits there. It doesn't produce anything. Monetary Metals built its entire business around that gap.

Instead of buying and selling gold for a price spread like a bullion dealer, the company originates gold-denominated financing deals for businesses that actually consume precious metals as part of their operations.

Think jewelry manufacturers who need working inventory, refiners who need throughput, and mining companies that need capital tied to the metal they produce. Investors supply the gold or silver. The business borrows it. Interest gets paid back in the same metal.

This is a genuinely different model from an ETF or a coin dealer. You're not speculating on price. You're lending a commodity to a company that needs it, the way a bank lends dollars to a business that needs working capital.

Keith Weiner, the company's CEO, has spent years writing about what he calls the "unproductive" nature of most gold ownership, and the platform is essentially his attempt to fix that.

How Leases and Bonds Differ

Monetary Metals offers two main products, and they are not interchangeable. Here's a side by side look:

Leases tend to be the entry point. A jeweler needs inventory to make rings and doesn't want to tie up cash buying gold outright, so they lease it, pay a set annual rate, and hand it back (or roll it forward) at term end.

Bonds work more like a fixed-income security, except the coupon and principal are both denominated in ounces rather than dollars, and they're aimed at businesses that need longer-term capital, like a mining operation ramping up production.

The Numbers Behind the Platform

Here's where things get concrete. According to figures published on the company's own site:

None of these figures are audited third-party numbers. They come from the company.

That's not a knock on Monetary Metals specifically, it's just standard practice for a private platform like this, and it's worth remembering when you compare returns advertised on the site to returns from regulated products like Treasury bonds or bank CDs, which come with standardized, third-party reporting.

A Look at Recently Funded Deals

To get a sense of what actually happens on the platform, here are a handful of deals the company has publicly listed as recently funded:

Notice the pattern. Bonds carry the highest headline rate but also the longest term and the exposure to a single mining company's operational risk. Leases pay less but roll faster and spread across more counterparties.

Why This Matters Right Now: The Gold and Silver Market in 2026

Gold hit $4,111 per ounce on July 2, 2026, according to Fortune's daily pricing data, up more than $750 from the same time a year earlier.

Trading Economics put gold at $4,170 the next day, citing a weak June US jobs report (just 57,000 jobs added versus a forecast of 110,000) that pushed traders to scale back bets on a Federal Reserve rate hike. Silver moved even more sharply.

Fortune reported spot silver at $60.96 on July 2, up more than $24 year over year, and Trading Economics had it near $62.86 the following day.

A Reuters poll of 30 analysts pegged the median 2026 gold forecast at $4,746.50 an ounce, the highest annual consensus figure in that poll's history dating back to 2012.

Goldman Sachs has projected gold reaching $4,900 by the end of 2026. Central banks added a net 41 metric tons of gold to reserves in May alone, according to World Gold Council data cited by Trading Economics.

Put simply: a lot more people are holding a lot more gold right now than they were two or three years ago. That's exactly the environment where a yield product on idle metal starts to look more attractive, since the opportunity cost of storing dead weight in a vault only grows as the value of that weight climbs.

Who Should Actually Consider This

Monetary Metals isn't for everyone, and the company doesn't pretend otherwise on its own materials.

People who probably shouldn't jump in without more homework: anyone who needs same-day liquidity, anyone unfamiliar with counterparty risk in private lending structures, and anyone who hasn't read the specific lease or bond terms for the deal they're considering, since rates and risk vary quite a bit between a 12-month jewelry lease and a 3-year mining bond.

Risks Worth Knowing

Leases and bonds on this platform are not FDIC insured, and they are not guaranteed by any government agency. Returns depend on the performance of the businesses borrowing the metal.

If a jeweler or miner defaults, investors bear that risk, and the company's own disclosures note that past performance doesn't guarantee future results. Bonds in particular carry longer duration risk and are typically restricted to accredited investors for that reason.

This is closer to private credit than to a savings account, and it should be evaluated with that framing in mind.