Brazil and Latin America’s largest bank Itau Unibanco recently announced the full opening of Bitcoin and Ethereum trading services to all customers. Customers can now buy and sell BTC and ETH directly through downloading Itau’s investment platform Ion.
Itau Unibanco, the largest bank in Brazil and Latin America, first introduced cryptocurrency trading services to some customers in December last year. On the 10th, the bank officially announced the full opening to all customers. Now, customers only need to download Itau’s internal investment platform Ion to trade Bitcoin and Ethereum.
Although the bank has not officially disclosed the number of Ion users, the application has been downloaded over 3.5 million times on mobile phones. According to ADV rating website information, the bank has nearly 60 million customers and nearly 100,000 employees, with total assets exceeding $442.3 billion. It is expected that this full opening will help more traditional investors enter the cryptocurrency market.
Itau creates a separate wallet for each customer
Initially, Itau only opened this service to some customers to evaluate the popularity of Bitcoin and Ethereum on the Ion platform. Guto Antunes, Itau’s digital asset manager, stated that customers have shown high trust and acceptance of their cryptocurrency custody solutions.
Antunes added that the entire custody solution has been built and implemented within Itau internally since its conception, without relying on any third-party services.
Possibility of more currencies?
Although Itau Unibanco currently only offers Bitcoin and Ethereum to users, as customers seek other cryptocurrencies, Antunes stated that they are considering expanding their cryptocurrency product line. However, this will depend on a strict regulatory risk assessment process.
As for the US Dollar stablecoin (USDT, which accounted for over 80% of transactions in Brazil last year), Itau is still waiting for clearer regulatory guidance from the Central Bank of Brazil to determine the operation of these stablecoins. Itau emphasized that in July 2022, the bank launched tokenization services and established a digital assets department to help businesses looking to tokenize on the blockchain and enter the broader financial market. Antunes stated that Itau sees blockchain technology as a potential foundation for banking systems and believes it is the new era of tokenized assets.
With more and more traditional large banks beginning to offer cryptocurrency services, this indicates that cryptocurrencies are gradually being more widely accepted and becoming part of mainstream financial services. The future development of cryptocurrencies is promising.