Itaú Unibanco formally notified Brazil’s central bank on Tuesday, 27 Oct, that it provides crypto trading and custody to clients, Valor Econômico reported. Under the new rules, that combination of services matches the category of a crypto broker, or corretora. Firms that were already operating must file by 30 Oct.
Itaú is the first bank in Brazil to formalise its crypto business this way, CoinDesk reported.
The bank did not need to apply for a licence. Financial institutions that the central bank has already authorised follow a notification procedure, Valor said, while dedicated crypto firms must request authorisation.
“A clear-rules environment with high standards of security and governance benefits the whole industry and, above all, consumers.”
Guto Antunes, superintendent of digital assets, Itaú Unibanco, to Valor (our translation from Portuguese)
Itaú has offered crypto buying and selling since December 2023 and keeps clients’ coins in its own custody. Valor counted more than 14 assets on offer, including bitcoin, ether and the dollar stablecoin USDC; CoinDesk, citing the bank’s website, put the figure at 15. The bank has not disclosed how many clients use the service or how much they trade.
Compared with what?
The exchanges are going through the longer door. Mercado Bitcoin, which has operated in Brazil since 2013 and says it has 4.8 million clients, filed for authorisation as a crypto broker on Tuesday, Valor reported separately. The request still has to be reviewed by the central bank.
Bybit and the stablecoin issuer Crown also filed this month, Valor said, and Binance’s Brazilian unit applied on 23 Oct.
“The challenge now will be to ensure these rules are applied equivalently to all participants,” Mercado Bitcoin’s vice-president for legal, compliance and risk, Vanessa Butalla, told Valor (our translation). That is a point about competition: a bank notifies, while an exchange waits for a decision.
Risks: a notification or an application is not a licence. Firms that miss the deadline must wind down their crypto services within 30 days, and from 6 November banks may not serve unlicensed crypto firms, as set out in the 6 November cut-off for banks serving unlicensed firms. Clients who leave coins with any provider, bank or exchange, depend on its custody.
What to watch: how many firms file by Friday, whether other large banks follow Itaú, and how long the central bank takes to rule on the exchanges’ requests.
This article is for information only and is not investment advice.