The financial institution’s 60 million clients can now purchase BTC and ETH by way of the agency’s Ion app.
The biggest banking establishment in Latin America has opened the doorways for all of its shoppers to get publicity to Bitcoin and Ethereum.
Itaú Unibanco, Brazil’s largest financial institution by property beneath administration, is now providing BTC and ETH buying and selling to its greater than 60 million shoppers. Customers can entry each tokens by way of the corporate’s Ion app.
In December 2023, Itaú launched the cryptocurrency buying and selling platform for choose shoppers. In keeping with the agency’s Head of Digital Belongings, Guto Antunes, the financial institution determined to increase its operations because of weekly surveys displaying excessive demand for crypto companies.
Though the corporate is barely providing the 2 largest property by market capitalization, the concept is so as to add help for different tokens sooner or later. “It begins with bitcoin, however our overarching strategic plan is to increase to different crypto property sooner or later,” Antunes mentioned final yr.
Establishments in Brazil have been relentlessly pushing the envelope in the case of crypto companies within the nation. Alongside Itaú’s crypto buying and selling platform unveiled final yr, Brazilian neobank Nubank partnered with Circle to supply USDC entry to the corporate’s 80 million clients.
Latin America is quietly turning into a regional powerhouse when it comes to crypto adoption. Lately, a grassroots Argentinean group known as Crecimiento revealed plans to create a Crypto Silicon Valley in Buenos Aires. Throughout the Andes, Chile has been paving the best way for friendlier regulation when it comes to fintech corporations, with the nation approving a brand new monetary applied sciences legislation in 2023.
And the area is one which desperately wants extra monetary inclusion. It’s house to greater than 650 million folks, of which 122 million are unbanked, whereas residents of a number of nations grapple with double and triple-digit inflation.
