Itau Unibanco, the largest bank in Brazil and Latin America, has made cryptocurrency trading services available to all users. Through the bank’s internal investment platform Ion, users can purchase BTC and ETH, a feature that was previously only available to some specific users.

Cryptocurrency trading services fully open

While the service launched in December, it was initially only available to select consumers and gradually expanded to more users.

Guto Antunes, head of digital assets at Itau Unibanco, said that banks first need to evaluate the acceptance of these assets after they are included in the Ion platform, and users have great trust in Itau Unibanco Bank’s cryptocurrency custody solution, so the acceptance is very high.

Itau Unibanco has developed its own custody solution, with each user having a digital wallet and asset segregation that complies with regulatory requirements. Although the development of the custody included support from tokenization servicer Liqi, the execution of the asset custody did not involve a third party and the entire custody solution, from conception, was completed within Itau Unibanco with architectural and fiduciary responsibility.

(Itau, Brazil’s largest bank, launches cryptocurrency trading services, providing Bitcoin and Ethereum transactions)

Digital assets currently available

The Ion platform currently only provides users with two digital assets, BTC and ETH, but it is already considering adding new cryptocurrencies and is waiting for the Brazilian Central Bank’s regulations on stablecoins to include stablecoins on the Ion platform.

Although Itau Unibanco does not officially announce the number of ion users, ion has been downloaded 3.5 million times on smartphones, including Android and iOS operating systems.

Director Guto Antunes emphasized:

We are aligned with the central bank on regulations and we want to grow in the right way.

This article Brazil’s largest bank Itau opens all-user crypto transactions, and the next step is to include stablecoins first appeared on Chain News ABMedia.