Brazil's largest lender Itaú is stepping deeper into the tokenization

Brazil’s biggest bank is taking another step into tokenized assets, adding to a growing list of the country’s financial heavyweights experimenting with putting traditional investments on blockchain rails.

Itaú Unibanco has started working with digital-asset infrastructure provider OpenAssets on a tokenization pilot run by Brazilian Financial and Capital Markets Association ANBIMA, the companies said Tuesday.

The project will test how fixed-income securities and investment funds can be issued, traded and settled using distributed-ledger technology, the firms said in a press release. The work will also examine the rules and technical standards needed for banks and asset managers to use such systems.

Itaú’s involvement gives the effort some heft. The São Paulo-based bank is Latin America’s largest lender, with more than $562 billion in total assets, according to S&P Global.

Tokenization has become one of Wall Street’s favorite use cases for blockchain technology, with banks and asset managers experimenting with putting bonds, funds, private credit and equities on digital ledgers. Citi has estimated that tokenized securities could grow into a $5.5 trillion market by 2030 as financial assets will move onto blockchain-based systems.