Itaú Unibanco, Latin America’s largest bank, announced on August 11, 2026 Tuesday that it is partnering with digital asset infrastructure provider OpenAssets to test tokenized fixed-income securities and investment funds through a pilot run by ANBIMA, Brazil’s financial and capital markets association.
What the Pilot Tests
The project will examine how fixed-income instruments such as debentures and investment funds can be issued, traded, and settled using distributed ledger technology, while also working through the regulatory and technical standards that banks and asset managers would need before adopting such a system more broadly.
ANBIMA’s tokenization pilot brings together more than 50 financial and capital markets organizations to test practical blockchain applications across the full lifecycle of these instruments, from issuance through settlement.
Itaú and OpenAssets’ collaboration specifically includes developing technical proofs of concept, providing advisory work on tokenization architecture and standards, and assessing the operational and compliance frameworks that banks would need before this kind of infrastructure could move beyond pilot status.
OpenAssets Chairman and CEO Gabor Gurbacs framed Brazil’s specific role in the effort directly. “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,” Gurbacs said.
This isn’t Itaú’s first tokenization effort. The bank was among the institutions Brazil’s central bank selected in 2023 to participate in Drex, an earlier pilot testing blockchain-based transactions involving tokenized money and assets.
Itaú is Latin America’s largest bank by both total assets, with more than $562 billion according to S&P Global, and by market capitalization according to Bloomberg data, giving this specific partnership more institutional weight than a similarly structured pilot from a smaller lender might carry.
Brazil’s Broader Tokenization Push
This partnership fits into a wider pattern of Brazilian financial institutions experimenting with blockchain-based assets.
Brazilian credit structuring firm VERT Capital announced plans in July 2025 to tokenize up to $1 billion in debt and receivables on the XDC Network, while Brazil-based exchange Mercado Bitcoin has separately outlined plans to tokenize $200 million in assets, including fixed-income and equity instruments, on the XRP Ledger. Our earlier coverage of tokenized securities addresses this broader institutional trend beyond Brazil.
Tokenization’s reach in Brazil extends well beyond bank-run pilots and institutional finance. Farmers in Paraná who struggled to secure traditional bank loans tokenized 10 dairy cows and put the resulting tokens up for trading through infrastructure connected to Brazil’s B3 exchange, a concrete illustration of how the same underlying technology institutions are testing for bonds and funds is already being applied to far smaller-scale, non-traditional assets.
Worth Knowing About OpenAssets Itself
OpenAssets raised $10 million in a funding round led by Latin America-focused venture firm Valor Capital Group, with participating investors including USDT issuer Tether and, notably, members of the family that founded Itaú Unibanco.
OpenAssets has said it’s developing open tokenization standards in collaboration with the Linux Foundation Decentralized Trust, positioning itself as a broader infrastructure provider rather than a company built around any single institutional partnership.
Tokenization has become one of the more active use cases for blockchain technology across traditional finance broadly, with banks and asset managers experimenting with putting bonds, funds, private credit, and equities onto digital ledgers.
Citi has estimated the tokenized securities market could grow to $5.5 trillion by 2030.
What Comes Next
ANBIMA’s pilot does not have a fixed public end date, and the initiative’s own stated scope, technical proofs of concept, advisory work, and a compliance framework assessment suggest this phase is measured in months rather than weeks. Itaú and OpenAssets have also not indicated when, or whether, a successful pilot would lead to any live, commercially available tokenized product.
What this means for you: this pilot is explicitly framed as a test of infrastructure and standards rather than as a launch of a live, investable product, so there’s nothing here to act on directly yet. For readers new to the Brazilian market, our guide on how to buy and sell cryptocurrencies in Brazil covers the basics that this broader institutional push builds on.
