Brazil's Largest Bank Wants to Open Crypto Trading Services

Liputan6.com, Jakarta – A number of banks in the world are starting to look at the opportunities offered by cryptocurrencies, including Itau Unibanco. One of the largest banks in Brazil and the United States (US) announced the general availability of cryptocurrency trading services for customers.

Launch News. bitcoin.com, Wednesday (12/6/2024) the bank with more than 60 million customers and almost 100 thousand employees will launch a crypto platform in December 2024.

However, this feature will only be available to certain customers which will then slowly be expanded to more users. First, Itau must assess the level of acceptance of these assets as part of the Ion platform, the bank's investment application.

Itaú's Head of Digital Assets, Guto Antunes, revealed that this crypto feature has received quite high acceptance from customers, because they have trusted Itau's cryptocurrency storage solution.

Antunes clarified that the bank developed its custodial solution, where each customer has a digital wallet with separate assets.

“We have shares and a partnership with Liqi, but nothing in terms of custody. The entire custody solution, since it was conceived, has been done with architecture and fiduciary obligations in Itau.”

Additionally, crypto platform Itau will only provide its already available digital asset offerings, consisting of bitcoin (BTC) and ether (ETH), to customers, although they are already considering the inclusion of new cryptocurrencies.

However, as a regulated banking entity, Itau still expects Brazil's central bank to issue regulations regarding the treatment of stablecoins for inclusion on its Ion platform.

“We are aligned with the central bank in regulatory development, we want to grow in the right way,” explained Antunes.

Previously, in July 2022, Itau itself had launched a tokenization service, creating a Digital Asset unit for this purpose. The unit will act as a service provider for companies looking to place their assets on the blockchain and into broader financial markets.

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