Itaú Tests Tokenized Bonds in Brazil's Regulatory Sandbox
Brazil's largest lender, Itaú Unibanco, is pushing the boundaries of tokenized finance by testing tokenized bonds and funds in a pilot overseen by ANBIMA, the Brazilian securities industry watchdog. The bank is working with tokenization specialist OpenAssets to test the feasibility of end-to-end tokenization, where bonds and fund shares are issued, transferred, and settled on distributed ledgers without legacy back-office systems.
The sandbox program allows regulated entities to experiment with tokenized fixed-income instruments in a controlled environment. ANBIMA's pilot is part of a broader push by Brazilian regulators to modernize capital markets. The country's central bank has also been advancing its Drex digital currency project, a wholesale CBDC aimed at interbank settlement.
Itaú's pilot with OpenAssets aims to answer practical questions such as how to ensure ownership rights are properly recorded and how to handle corporate actions on-chain. By running these tests under ANBIMA's supervision, the bank can avoid legal gray zones that have slowed similar experiments in other jurisdictions.