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- Idea Of The Day - Turn weird commodities into cash: You can tokenize jet fuel, rice, and who knows what else.
Idea Of The Day - Turn weird commodities into cash: You can tokenize jet fuel, rice, and who knows what else.
GM. This is Needs to Exist (aka NTE), today delivering a startup idea that’ll turn hidden markets into liquid gold.
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Here’s what we’ve got for you today.
Daily Idea - Tokenizing hidden markets
Oh Yes we think the Blockchain is still useful


Inspired by the Blockworks Podcast
The One Liner
Turn niche commodities into liquid, tradable assets with tokenization.
The 140 character tweet (or X) version
Jet fuel. Indonesian rice. Hidden markets worth billions. Tokenize them, make them tradable, and let anyone—on or off-chain—get in the game.
The Longer Story Version
The Problem
Some of the most valuable commodities in the world aren’t just hard to trade—they’re nearly invisible.
Try buying West Coast jet fuel. Or investing in Indonesian rice. You can’t. These markets exist, but they’re opaque, illiquid, and locked up by institutional players who don’t have time (or incentive) to spin up a new market.
That’s a massive opportunity hiding in plain sight.
Traditional commodity markets take years to structure. By the time they do, the alpha is gone, and only the biggest players benefit.
We need a way to turn niche, high-value commodities into liquid assets instantly.
The Solution
Tokenization changes the game.
Here’s how:
Pick the commodity. Lithium brine (critical for EV batteries), African cocoa (core to global supply chains), voluntary carbon offsets (increasingly valuable for ESG mandates).
Turn it into a tradable token. The token represents ownership, a forward contract, or a stake in the underlying asset.
Make it tradeable. On-chain, off-chain, or both—so that crypto traders and institutional players can participate.
Let demand do the rest. Price discovery, instant liquidity, and global access—no waiting for a market to "develop."
It’s like spinning up an entire commodity exchange on demand.
How We’d Build It
Blockchain Infrastructure: Use Securitize or Tokeny for compliant asset tokenization.
Market Liquidity: Leverage Hyperliquid or Pendle for dynamic pricing and secondary market liquidity.
Off-Chain Access: Integrate with ClearToken or Calyptus to bridge institutional capital.
No-Code Frontend: Use OutSystems or Retool to launch a simple trading interface fast.
Data & Pricing Feeds: Pull real-time commodity pricing from DXM or Paradigm for accurate trade execution.
Why It Needs to Exist
Most tokenization projects go after the big assets—gold, real estate, securities. But the real opportunity?
The long tail of commodities—high-value, untapped markets that institutions struggle to access.
This isn’t about speculation. It’s about turning hidden markets into global opportunities.
Traders get a new asset class.
Producers get real liquidity.
Investors get exposure to non-correlated, high-value assets.
This isn’t just a new product. It’s a new way to create markets.
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The Blockchain Boom Is Coming (And Most People Are Laughing At It)

Crypto bros spent the last few years lighting money on fire, launching meme coins with dog pictures, and shilling JPEGs of cartoon apes. Meanwhile, the rest of the world is looking at blockchain like it’s a giant joke.
But here’s the thing about jokes: sometimes they turn into golden opportunities.
Remember the early days of the internet? People were spending thousands on domains like coolwebsite.com. Everyone laughed. Then, 20 years later, the guy who bought pizza.com sold it for $2.6M.
Right now, we’re in the "messy middle" of blockchain. The infrastructure is still being built, the best tools are still clunky, and only the most hardcore nerds are willing to play around with it.
But here’s the inevitable pattern of technology:
Phase 1: Nerds build tools. Clunky, slow, but kind of magical.
Phase 2: Toys & speculators show up. (This is where we are now.)
Phase 3: Real businesses emerge. Things get easier, and the late adopters show up.
Phase 4: It becomes boringly obvious.
Right now, we are in Phase 2 moving into Phase 3. Which means: pay attention now, or you’ll be left behind.
The Big Unlock: Tokenization
Tokenization is the blockchain’s biggest superpower that almost nobody is using correctly.
What is tokenization? Turning anything into an asset that can be digitally owned, traded, and programmed.
A few examples of where this is going:
✅ Real estate: Own a fraction of a building the way you buy shares of a stock.
✅ Music royalties: Every time a song plays, the right people automatically get paid in real-time.
✅ Gaming: Players truly own their in-game assets instead of buying them and getting locked into a single game.
✅ Fundraising: Instead of begging VCs, create a token that represents early access, perks, or future revenue share.
Right now, 99% of “Web3 projects” are bad copies of existing things. (“It’s like Airbnb but with NFTs!”)
The real winners will be people who use blockchain as an ingredient, not the whole recipe.
Think Stripe for payments. Think OpenAI for text & images. Blockchain will be a backend tool, not the whole business.
Tools to Start Playing With (Before It’s Too Late)
If you want to be ahead of the curve, start playing around with these now:
1️⃣ Thirdweb – Lets you build blockchain apps without needing to be a Solidity expert. (Think of it as Stripe for Web3.)
2️⃣ Base by Coinbase – A developer-friendly blockchain built by Coinbase. Cheap, fast, and great for launching tokenized projects.
3️⃣ Sound.xyz – A new way for musicians to monetize directly with their fans using blockchain.
4️⃣ Mirror.xyz – Like Substack, but with built-in ways to tokenize content. Writers can earn from their best pieces.
5️⃣ Manifold.xyz – If you want to experiment with NFTs (but in a useful way), this tool lets you launch and customize your own smart contracts.
The game is simple:
Watch what tools are emerging.
Test them out.
Think about **how you can use tokenization to make something better, not just “on the blockchain.”
Iterate before it’s too late.
Because once blockchain tech is as easy as today’s AI tools, it’s game over. The real opportunities will already be taken.
And the best part? The people who win aren’t the loudest ones screaming about “Web3” on Twitter. It’s the ones who quietly build, test, and iterate.
Are you paying attention? 🚀
One More Meme
