Brazil’s largest lender Itaú is stepping deeper into the tokenization

Brazil’s biggest bank is taking another step into tokenized assets, adding to a growing list of the country’s financial heavyweights experimenting with putting traditional investments on blockchain rails.

Itaú Unibanco has started working with digital-asset infrastructure provider OpenAssets on a tokenization pilot run by Brazilian Financial and Capital Markets Association ANBIMA, the companies said Tuesday.

The project will test how fixed-income securities and investment funds can be issued, traded and settled using distributed-ledger technology, the firms said in a press release. The work will also examine the rules and technical standards needed for banks and asset managers to use such systems.

Itaú’s involvement gives the effort some heft. The São Paulo-based bank is Latin America’s largest lender, with more than $562 billion in total assets, according to S&P Global.

Tokenization has become one of Wall Street’s favorite use cases for blockchain technology, with banks and asset managers experimenting with putting bonds, funds, private credit and equities on digital ledgers. Citi has estimated that tokenized securities could grow into a $5.5 trillion market by 2030 as financial assets will move onto blockchain-based systems.

Brazil has emerged as a key hub for tokenization, with initiatives already stretching well beyond bank-run pilots. In July 2025, Brazilian credit structuring and securitization firm VERT Capital unveiled plans to tokenize as much as $1 billion of debt and receivables on the XDC Network. Brazil-based crypto exchange Mercado Bitcoin also shared plans to tokenize $200 million in assets on the XRP Ledger, including fixed-income and equity instruments.

More recently, tokenization reached a rather different corner of Brazil’s economy: dairy cows. Farmers in Paraná, who struggled to obtain bank loans, tokenized 10 cows and put the tokens up for trading through infrastructure connected to Brazil’s B3 exchange.

This ANBIMA initiative isn’t Itaú’s first foray into tokenization. The lender was among the institutions selected by Brazil’s central bank in 2023 to participate in the Drex pilot, which tested blockchain-based transactions involving tokenized money and assets.

“Brazil has been one of the most forward-looking markets in finance and it is a natural place to move tokenization from exploration to production,” said Gabor Gurbacs, chairman and CEO of OpenAssets.

OpenAssets itself raised $10 million last year to build tokenization infrastructure. The round was led by Latin America-focused venture firm Valor Capital Group, with participating investors including USDT stablecoin issuer Tether and members of the family that founded Itaú Unibanco.