Brazil's largest bank Itaú Unibanco is testing tokenized bonds and funds with OpenAssets under an ANBIMA pilot, signaling a push toward production-ready blockchain infrastructure in Latin America.
Itaú Unibanco, Brazil's largest private bank, is moving deeper into blockchain-based capital markets. The bank has joined a pilot run by ANBIMA, the country's financial and capital markets association, to test the issuance and settlement of tokenized bonds and investment funds, Itaú said.
OpenAssets, a digital asset infrastructure firm, will supply the tokenization platform for the experimental phase. The partnership is part of a broader ANBIMA program that approved 20 use cases from 39 proposals in April. More than 50 entities, including banks, asset managers and technology providers, submitted proposals. The tests run on a private, access-controlled ledger with no real financial transfers, the association said.
Itaú, based in São Paulo, manages more than $562 billion in assets, according to S&P Global. The bank previously participated in Brazil's central bank Drex pilot in 2023, which tested blockchain-based transactions using a digital version of the real and tokenized assets.
The specific applications under review include corporate bonds, known as debentures, and various investment fund structures. Those products represent some of the most actively traded fixed-income instruments in Brazil's capital markets, Itaú said. The bank and OpenAssets will evaluate the technical protocols and regulatory frameworks that institutions would need to deploy these systems at scale.
OpenAssets raised $10 million last year to develop its platform. Valor Capital Group led the round, with participation from Tether and members of the Itaú Unibanco founding family.
Brazil has become a busy market for tokenization. In July 2025, VERT Capital said it planned to tokenize as much as $1 billion in debt and receivables on the XDC Network. Mercado Bitcoin disclosed plans to tokenize $200 million in assets on the XRP Ledger. In agriculture, Paraná livestock producers tokenized 10 dairy cattle and listed the digital tokens on systems integrated with the B3 stock exchange.
Globally, the total value of tokenized real-world assets on public blockchains has more than doubled in the past year, rising from about $18.9 billion in August 2025 to $38.3 billion now, according to RWA.xyz. US Treasury securities account for over $16 billion of that total. The growth has been driven by demand for onchain versions of traditional assets, including money-market funds and corporate bonds. Tokenized equity products have also seen a surge in volume, with products like the tokenized QQQ driving a significant share of July activity.
“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.
The pilot gives Itaú a chance to test the infrastructure before the central bank's digital real goes live, a person familiar with the bank's strategy said. The Drex program is expected to expand to more use cases in the coming years, and the ANBIMA pilot could feed into that work, the person added.
Itaú's participation may encourage other lenders to join the program, according to a person familiar with the discussions. The ANBIMA pilot already includes over 50 entities, suggesting broad industry interest in testing the technology.
The trial is set to run through the end of 2026, with results expected to inform regulatory proposals for tokenized assets in Brazil, the association said.
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