Itaú Unibanco, a major Latin American banking group, is rolling out a cryptocurrency trading service for its customers. Users of the investment platform will first be able to trade BTC and ETH, with the bank serving as a custodian.
Itaú Unibanco, the largest bank by assets in Brazil and one of the leading lenders in Latin America, has launched crypto trading via its investment platform. This was reported by Reuters.
Guto Antunes, Digital Asset Head at Itaú, said users would initially be able to trade Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH), but the company planned to expand the list of supported digital assets in the future.
Itaú Bank will serve as the crypto custodian for its customers, ensuring the safety of invested funds. Antunes noted that deposits and withdrawals of cryptocurrencies via external crypto wallets won’t be available at this stage. However, the company’s financial position will ensure the safety of customer funds.
The banking giant’s initiative comes a few months after two major financial companies left the local crypto market. Brokerage and investment company XP Investimentos, which announced the shutdown of its crypto services without specifying the reason, and financial company PicPay, whose representatives cited regulatory uncertainty as the cause for ending their activities in the field of cryptocurrencies.
Last year, the President of Brazil acknowledged cryptocurrencies as a legal means of payment, but digital assets didn’t become an official payment tool due to this. Local banks began to actively offer their customers the opportunity to store crypto-assets in bank accounts. The government is now preparing for the launch of Drex, the digital Brazilian real (CBDC).
