Itaú, $562B Bank, Joins ANBIMA Tokenization Pilot With OpenAssets

Itaú Unibanco, the $562 billion-asset lender that ranks as Latin America’s largest bank, has agreed to test tokenized fixed-income securities and investment funds through a pilot led by Brazil’s financial markets association, ANBIMA. The bank is partnering with digital-asset infrastructure provider OpenAssets on the project, announced Tuesday.

The move puts a concrete number behind Brazil’s tokenization ambitions: a $562 billion balance sheet now sits inside an industry-wide effort to move debentures and fund shares onto distributed ledger technology (DLT). For Cryptaur’s readers, the figure matters because it signals institutional capital — not just fintech startups — is willing to stake reputational weight on tokenized market infrastructure.

What the pilot actually tests

Itaú and OpenAssets will build technical proofs of concept covering issuance, trading and settlement of tokenized debentures and investment funds. The work runs on a private, permissioned DLT network in a simulated environment — no real financial transactions are taking place yet, and the companies are still mapping the operational, compliance and technology requirements needed before any live rollout.

ANBIMA selected this use case in April from a pool of 39 proposals submitted by more than 50 banks, asset managers and technology firms, ultimately advancing 20 use cases into the pilot phase. Itaú’s participation gives the broader effort added institutional credibility given its size relative to peers in the program.

Tokenized RWAs doubled to $38.3 billion in a year

The Itaú-OpenAssets pilot lands amid a broader surge in tokenized real-world assets globally. Data from RWA.xyz shows the value of tokenized RWAs distributed on public blockchains rose from roughly $18.9 billion in August 2025 to $38.3 billion today — more than doubling in twelve months. US Treasury debt remains the dominant category, accounting for over $16 billion of that total.

Citi has projected the tokenized securities market could scale to $5.5 trillion by 2030 as banks and asset managers increasingly move bonds, funds, private credit and equities onto blockchain-based rails. That forecast is a projection, not a guarantee, but it frames why institutions like Itaú are moving now rather than waiting for the market to mature around them.

Brazil’s tokenization race is already crowded

Itaú’s entry adds to a lineup of Brazilian tokenization initiatives that predate this pilot. In July 2025, credit structuring firm VERT Capital announced plans to tokenize as much as $1 billion in debt and receivables on the XDC Network. Separately, Brazilian crypto exchange Mercado Bitcoin outlined plans to tokenize $200 million in assets — including fixed-income and equity instruments — on the XRP Ledger.

Those figures collectively point to Brazil positioning itself as a regulatory testing ground for on-chain capital markets infrastructure, with ANBIMA’s structured, permissioned pilot approach offering a lower-risk path for large incumbents like Itaú to participate without exposing real client funds during the proof-of-concept stage.

For crypto-native investors, the practical takeaway is that none of this pilot activity involves live capital yet — it’s a simulated environment. But the scale of the participants, from a $562 billion bank to a market that has already doubled to $38.3 billion in tokenized RWAs, suggests the infrastructure being tested could eventually route real institutional flow onto DLT rails if the compliance and technology requirements clear ANBIMA’s bar.

Sources

• cointelegraph.com
• coindesk.com