- Itaú Unibanco, Latin America's largest private bank, joins an ANBIMA-led pilot to test tokenization of fixed income securities and investment funds with tech firm OpenAssets.
- The initiative is part of Brazil's broader push toward regulated digital assets, including the Drex central bank digital currency project and a licensing deadline for crypto firms.
- Brazil's tokenization ecosystem is expanding beyond banks, with examples like VERT Capital's $1 billion tokenization plan, Mercado Bitcoin's $200 million XRP Ledger project, and farmers tokenizing dairy cows in Paraná.
- Citi estimates the global tokenized securities market could reach $5.5 trillion by 2030, as institutional interest in real-world asset (RWA) tokenization accelerates.
The largest private bank in Latin America, Itaú Unibanco, has stepped into Brazil’s growing tokenization scene. The bank is now part of a sector-wide pilot project coordinated by ANBIMA, the Brazilian association representing financial and capital market institutions, alongside digital asset infrastructure provider OpenAssets. The move is a big deal, as Itaú manages over $562 billion in assets, giving significant weight to the experiment.
This pilot is not just another tech trial. It aims to explore how traditional financial instruments like fixed income securities and investment funds can be issued, traded, and settled using blockchain or distributed ledger technology (DLT). The goal is to figure out what needs to change technically and regulatorily before such assets can go mainstream. It’s a careful, measured step, but one that signals where the financial industry is headed.
What Exactly Will Itaú and OpenAssets Test?
The project will focus on two main types of assets: debentures (corporate debt instruments) and investment fund shares. These are common instruments in Brazil’s capital markets, making them good candidates for testing how tokenization could work in practice. The tests will be run in a simulated environment on a private, permissioned DLT network, so no real money or live transactions are involved at this stage.
OpenAssets brings its tokenization platform to the table, while Itaú contributes its deep experience in capital markets. Together, they’ll look at operational requirements, compliance issues, and tech hurdles. The idea is to create common standards that other banks and asset managers could adopt later, avoiding a fragmented market where everyone uses incompatible systems.
This collaborative approach is actually pretty smart. Instead of going it alone, Itaú is testing alongside competitors, regulators, and tech providers. That reduces the risk of building something that doesn’t fit with the broader ecosystem. ANBIMA, for its part, selected 20 use cases out of 39 proposals from more than 50 institutions back in April, so this is a coordinated industry effort rather than a one-off experiment.
Brazil’s Bigger Tokenization Push
Itaú’s involvement is just one piece of a much larger puzzle. Brazil has been working on tokenization at multiple levels for a while now. There’s the Drex project, the central bank’s digital currency initiative that’s been testing tokenized money and assets since 2023. Itaú was actually one of the banks picked to participate in those trials, so this new pilot builds on that experience.
But tokenization in Brazil isn’t just about big banks and bonds. In July 2025, VERT Capital, a credit structuring firm, announced plans to tokenize up to $1 billion in debt and receivables on the XDC Network. Around the same time, Mercado Bitcoin, a major crypto exchange, said it would tokenize about $200 million in assets on the XRP Ledger, including fixed income and equity instruments. These are substantial numbers that show real intent, not just talk.
Even the agricultural sector is getting in on the act. Farmers in Paraná state, who had trouble getting bank loans, tokenized ten dairy cows and put the tokens into circulation using infrastructure connected to the B3 stock exchange. It’s a quirky example, but it illustrates how tokenization can reach corners of the economy that traditional finance often overlooks. This mix of high finance and real-world assets is what makes Brazil’s tokenization scene so dynamic.
Why Are Banks Like Itaú Interested in Tokenization?
The motivation behind all this activity is pretty straightforward: efficiency and cost savings. When you issue a bond the traditional way, you have multiple intermediaries—custodians, clearing houses, registries. Settlement can take days. Every step adds cost and counterparty risk. On a blockchain, the issuance, transfer, and settlement can happen on the same ledger in minutes, with a full trail of records.
This promise is why institutions globally are looking at moving bonds, funds, private credit, and even equities onto digital rails. Citi has estimated that the tokenized securities market could grow to $5.5 trillion by 2030. That’s not a small number, and it explains why banks are willing to invest time and resources in pilots like this one, even if they’re not generating revenue yet.
The data backs up the trend. According to RWA.xyz, the value of tokenized real-world assets on public blockchains has more than doubled over the past year, from about $18.9 billion in August 2025 to $38.3 billion now. US Treasury debt is the largest category, representing over $16 billion of that total. Institutional appetite is clearly there, and it’s growing.
What Does This Mean for the Region?
Brazil is positioning itself as a leader in this space, not just in Latin America but globally. The country has a central bank that’s actively pushing innovation, a market association that coordinates pilot projects, and a regulatory framework that allows banks to experiment within bounds. That combination is rare, and it’s attracting attention from international players.
OpenAssets, for instance, sees Brazil as a key market. Gabor Gurbacs, the company’s president and CEO, has said that Brazil has historically shown an open attitude toward financial innovation and has the right conditions to move tokenization from experiments into real-world applications. OpenAssets raised $10 million last year in a round led by Valor Capital Group, with participation from Tether and members of Itaú’s founding family—so there’s clearly confidence in the direction things are heading.
That said, there are still hurdles. The pilot is taking place in a controlled environment with no real transactions. For tokenization to go mainstream in Brazil, regulators need to clarify rules around custody, valuation, and tax treatment. Without that clarity, these assets are unlikely to scale beyond test environments. The industry is also watching to see how the central bank handles the licensing of crypto firms, with a deadline set for October 30 for the $319 billion Brazilian crypto market to get licensed under the new framework.
For now, the focus is on learning. The pilot will run its course, and the results will inform next steps. If things go well, Brazil could become one of the most advanced emerging markets for tokenized regulated financial instruments. The participation of a bank like Itaú sends a clear message that Brazil’s financial establishment doesn’t want to be left behind in this transition. It’s a cautious, collaborative, and measured approach to what could be a major shift in how financial assets are created and traded.
All things considered, this is a story about an industry getting ready for change. Itaú’s entry into the ANBIMA pilot is a milestone, but it’s part of a bigger narrative. Brazil is building an ecosystem where banks, tech firms, farmers, and even cows can coexist in the world of tokenized assets. The pieces are coming together, and the next few months will reveal just how far this can go.