Brazil's largest bank tests tokenized bonds and funds alongside 50+ institutions in ANBIMA's pilot, aiming for blockchain-based issuance and settlement. Itaú also brings Drex experience.
Brazil’s largest bank by market value is now inside the country’s broadest test of tokenized securities and funds. Itaú Unibanco joined a pilot led by ANBIMA, the Brazilian Financial and Capital Markets Association, that includes more than 50 financial institutions, infrastructure providers and regulators.
The pilot will examine how debentures – a common form of Brazilian corporate debt – and investment funds can be issued, traded and settled on distributed-ledger networks. OpenAssets, the firm providing the digital-asset infrastructure, said in an Aug. 11 announcement that it will work with Itaú on a structured use case.
“The initiative of OpenAssets and Itaú is designed to explore how tokenized assets can be issued, settled and managed within the frameworks and standards financial institutions require,” OpenAssets Chairman and CEO Gabor Gurbacs said in the statement. He called Brazil a “forward-looking” financial market and a natural place to move tokenization “from exploration to production.”
The companies will develop technical proofs of concept and assess the architecture, standards and compliance systems needed for live markets. ANBIMA’s program covers the full lifecycle of capital-market products on blockchain rails, starting with issuance before moving through trading, settlement and asset management.
Brazil’s institutional digital-asset scene has been building for years. Itaú gained early experience through Drex, the central bank’s digital currency and tokenization pilot that started in 2023. Several other large Brazilian institutions are also active. A March report identified Bradesco, Santander Brasil, BTG Pactual, Banco do Brasil, Banco BV and development bank BNDES as participants in the country’s institutional market. Exchange operator B3 has also tested how distributed-ledger systems could work in capital markets.
Private projects have accelerated. In July 2025, securitization company VERT Capital said it planned to place as much as $1 billion of debt and receivables on the XDC Network. Mercado Bitcoin said it intended to tokenize $200 million in fixed-income and equity products on the XRP Ledger. Tokenization has even reached agricultural lending: farmers in Paraná tokenized 10 dairy cows and made the resulting assets available through infrastructure connected to the B3 exchange, according to a July report.
The ANBIMA pilot is not aiming for a single public tokenized product. Instead, it is testing how existing securities and funds could function on blockchain rails under standards accepted by banks, asset managers and regulators. OpenAssets and Itaú will advise on tokenization architecture and common standards.
Itaú is Latin America’s largest lender by assets, at more than $562 billion, according to S&P Global. Its participation gives the project access to a bank that handles deposits, lending, investments and capital-market services on a large scale.
The same questions ANBIMA is addressing are being examined in the United States. The Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation planned limited production trades for tokenized securities from July before a full service launch targeted for October 2026. Its working group includes more than 50 companies: BlackRock, JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Bank of America, Circle, Nasdaq and NYSE Group among them.
DTCC said the service could initially cover Russell 1000 stocks, major index-tracking ETFs and U.S. Treasury securities held in its custody. A December 2025 SEC no-action letter allows DTCC subsidiary DTC to provide the service to participating firms for three years. DTC provides custody and asset servicing for more than $114 trillion in securities.
In July, U.S. transfer agents asked the SEC to prioritize issuer-approved tokenized stocks and ETFs. Continental Stock Transfer & Trust Company and the Securities Transfer Association said any framework should preserve shareholder records, issuer authorization, dividend rights, voting access, transfer controls and investor protections. They warned that unaffiliated products may provide only indirect economic exposure and create uncertainty over custody, corporate actions and claims during insolvency.
OpenAssets, previously called Pointsville, raised $10 million in 2025 to develop its tokenization technology. Valor Capital Group led the round; Tether and members of Itaú Unibanco’s founding family participated. The company said it is also contributing to open tokenization standards in collaboration with the Linux Foundation Decentralized Trust.
The pilot has no set end date, OpenAssets said.
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