Brazil's largest bank, Itau, opens up cryptocurrency trading to all users, with stablecoins next in line.

The largest bank in Brazil and Latin America, Itau Unibanco, has started offering cryptocurrency trading services to all its users. Through the bank's in-house investment platform, Ion, users can now purchase BTC and ETH, a feature that was previously only available to certain specific users.

Comprehensive Opening of Cryptocurrency Trading Services

Although this service was launched in December last year, it was initially only open to a limited number of consumers and has gradually expanded to more users.

Guto Antunes, the head of digital assets at Itau Unibanco, stated that the bank first needs to evaluate the acceptance of these assets being included in the Ion platform, and users have a high level of trust in Itau Unibanco's cryptocurrency custody solution, hence the high acceptance rate.

Itau Unibanco has developed its own custody solution where each user has a digital wallet and assets are kept in compliance with regulatory requirements. While the custody development involves the support of tokenization service provider Liqi, the execution of asset custody does not involve third parties. The entire custody solution, from concept to implementation, is carried out internally at Itau Unibanco with a framework and trust responsibility.

Brazil's largest bank Itau launches cryptocurrency trading service, offering Bitcoin and Ethereum transactions

Current Digital Assets Offered

The Ion platform currently only offers users BTC and ETH as digital assets, but is considering adding new cryptocurrencies and is awaiting regulatory guidelines from the Central Bank of Brazil to include stablecoins on the Ion platform.

Although Itau Unibanco has not officially disclosed the number of Ion users, the app has been downloaded 3.5 million times on smartphones, including those with Android and iOS operating systems.

Guto Antunes emphasized:

We are aligned with the Central Bank in terms of regulatory development, and we aim to grow in the right way.