Itaú deepens involvement in tokenization through joint initiative with OpenAssets

Itaú Unibanco, Brazil’s largest lender and Latin America’s biggest bank by market capitalization, is partnering with Pittsburgh-based digital asset infrastructure provider OpenAssets to push tokenized capital market instruments from concept to reality. The collaboration, announced on August 11, will participate in a pilot program led by ANBIMA, Brazil’s Financial and Capital Markets Association, testing the full lifecycle of tokenized debentures and investment funds on distributed ledger technology networks. What the pilot actually involves The ANBIMA pilot, which kicked off around October 2025, represents Brazil’s first coordinated network effort for tokenizing financial assets. Over 50 organizations have signed up to evaluate the technical, operational, governance, and compliance elements that would underpin future digital market infrastructure. Within that broader sandbox, the Itaú-OpenAssets initiative will focus on end-to-end lifecycle testing. That means issuance, trading, settlement, and ongoing management of tokenized fixed-income instruments, specifically debentures (a type of corporate bond common in Brazilian markets) and investment fund shares. OpenAssets brings its tok...