- Itaú, the largest private bank in Brazil, will launch a platform that will convert traditional financial products into tokens and will also offer cryptocurrency custody to its clients.
- These products will be managed by a new unit called Itaú Digital Assets.
- The services will be open in the first instance for companies/institutions, while the plan is that by the end of 2022 it will be available to all clients.
Although no one has a crystal ball to predict what will happen in the future, everything seems to indicate that the merger between traditional finance and cryptocurrencies will be the one that takes the lead. In Brazil, Banco Itaú, which also has a presence in other Latin American countries, began this process.
Itau is the largest private bank in Brazil (50th in the world) and the fourth most powerful company in the Brazilian market with a capitalization of $39.20 billion dollars, reported that will launch a platform that will manage to convert traditional financial products into tokens and will also offer cryptocurrency custody to its clients.
Itaú Digital Assets
Itaú will open a new unit called Itaú Digital Assets which will initially be open to companies/institutions, while the plan is that by the end of 2022 it will be available to all customers. The one in charge of the project will be Vanessa Fernandez, who is a senior executive with experience in internal controls and technology, among other tasks.
The bank even communicated that its intentions with digital assets will not stop at this single option. The company thinks about offering cryptocurrency trading servicesjust as exchanges do, although he did not give an exact date for this launch, as specified CoinDesk.
Itaú has the support of the Central Bank of Brazil, since in March it was contacted to collaborate with the possible implementation of the digital real, the Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) that the country will launch.
Last year it had revenues of 4,500M, surpassing Banco Bradesco, another of the big ones, which registered 4,000M and other competitors such as Banco Santander and Banco do Brasil.
What other Brazilian fintechs are the ones that have taken important steps?
PicPay, a digital payment application with more than 30 million users, communicated its intentions to create its own exchange and bring to the market a stable currency with parity to the real.
While, nubank, the largest digital bank in the country and with a serious competition with MercadoPago, added as an option that its users can buy and sell Bitcoin and Ethereum. The Argentine company already gives that opportunity since last year.
Previously, Bitcoin Mexico presented that The San Pablo soccer club began accepting payments in cryptocurrencies through an alliance with the Mexican exchange Bitso. The real estate developer Gafisa, the largest in the country, also receives digital assets from its alliance with Foxbit.
South America has a great interest in cryptocurrencies and Brazil can be one of the leaders of the next economy, the one that mixes the old traditional finances with modern ones, such as cryptocurrencies.
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