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Bradesco, one of the largest banks in Brazil and the third biggest in all of Latam, has entered the cryptocurrency world by issuing its first tokenized credit notes. The operation, carried out in partnership with Bolsa OTC, tokenized almost $2 million in bank credit notes, which were also distributed by Bradesco.
Bradesco Launches Asset Tokenization Program
Bradesco, one of the biggest banks in Brazil and Latam, has entered the crypto era, being one of the first institutions that harness blockchain tech in its operations in Brazil. The bank announced on Jan. 13, 2023, that it had tokenized the first batch of bank credit notes, valued at almost $2 million, as part of a pilot program to test the functionality of these technologies.
The operation, which Bradesco claims is the first one supervised and approved by the central bank of the country, was carried out in partnership with Bolsa OTC and using a regulatory sandbox that allows financial institutions to make this kind of test using new technologies.
On the significance of this, Edson Moreto, executive director of Bradesco, stated:
We continue to work and test the benefits of blockchain technology using its innovation ecosystem, Inovabra, so that new operations are made available to our customers.
The Asset Tokenization Business
Asset tokenization, the process of representing real-world assets in blockchains, is considered by some analysts the next step in market tech. The technology might become a trend for negotiations in financial markets in the future, with a report issued in December by BCG and ADDX predicting it will become a $16 trillion business opportunity by 2030.
Bradesco is the second bank in Brazil that is currently experimenting with tokenization and tokenized assets. The first one to do it was Itau Unibanco, which executed a series of tokenization tests issuing assets to employees and customers of the bank back in July.
At that time, Itau also announced the creation of its own tokenization unit, which would be focused on offering tokenization services to customers, allowing them to tokenize and sell these assets using a platform built and controlled by the bank.
According to local sources, more banks will be also including tokenization as part of their services portfolio in the future. Many of these institutions were expecting the approval of the recent cryptocurrency law, sanctioned in December, to have a clear panorama on compliance issues to offer these tokenization services.