Brazils Largest Bank Itau Opens Encrypted Transactions to All Users Next Step Involves Stablecoins
Brazil’s largest bank, Itau Unibanco, has now made cryptocurrency trading services available to all users. Through the bank’s internal investment platform, Ion, users can purchase BTC and ETH, a feature that was previously only open to specific users.
Although this service was launched in December last year, it was initially only available to a few consumers and has gradually expanded to more users. Itau Unibanco’s Digital Assets Manager, Guto Antunes, stated that the bank first needed to assess the acceptance of these assets on the Ion platform, and users have shown a high level of trust in the bank’s cryptocurrency custody solution, leading to high acceptance.
Itau Unibanco has developed its own custody solution, with each user having a digital wallet and assets isolated in compliance with regulations. While the development of custody involved support from tokenization service provider Liqi, the execution of asset custody did not involve third parties, and the entire custody solution, from concept to completion, was done internally at Itau Unibanco.
The Ion platform currently only offers BTC and ETH to users, but is considering adding new cryptocurrencies and is waiting for the Central Bank of Brazil to regulate stablecoins so they can also be included on the Ion platform.
Although Itau Unibanco has not officially announced the number of Ion users, the platform has been downloaded 3.5 million times on smartphones, including Android and iOS operating systems. Guto Antunes, the manager, emphasized: “We are aligned with the Central Bank in the regulation process, and we aim to grow in the right way.”
Itau Unibanco
Brazil
Latin America
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