Brazil’s largest bank Itaú says it’s considering launching a stablecoin, but is waiting to see the outcome of the central bank’s consultation on the topic, the Valor Econômico newspaper reported.
It was always on Itaú’s radar this stablecoin issue. We cannot ignore the strength that blockchain has to settle transactions in an atomic way,” said Guto Antunes, head of digital assets of Itaú, at a bank event in São Paulo. The newspaper argued that banks are particularly interested because the Trump administration won’t be pursuing a central bank digital currency (CBDC).
The bank is also a participant in DREX, Brazil’s wholesale CBDC initiative, which involves commercial banks issuing tokenized deposits on a shared ledger. It’s been experimenting with blockchain for years, including a DeFi foreign exchange trial in 2022. It launched cryptocurrency trading more than a year ago.
Assuming it launches a stablecoin, it won’t be the first bank to do so in Brazil. Investment bank BTG Pactual launched a dollar stablecoin in early 2023, although last time we checked it was highly controlled, with all the transactions executed by the bank on a public blockchain but via a single on-chain wallet. BTG Pactual is also a partner of USDC stablecoin issuer Circle.
Before the Trump executive order that put stablecoins at the forefront of his crypto agenda, there were already more than 20 bank stablecoin projects globally. Since then, interest from both startups and traditional financial (TradFi) institutions has ramped up, including news during the past week of stablecoin initiatives from asset manager Fidelity and SMBC.
