Latin America's largest bank, Itaú Unibanco, is warning that a rapid migration of customer deposits into stablecoins could disrupt credit creation in Brazil, giving local voice to concerns that have moved to the center of the standoff between US banks and the crypto industry over landmark digital asset legislation.

Speaking at the Blockchain.RIO 2026 conference, Guto Antunes, head of Itaú Digital Assets, said economies that rely heavily on bank credit could face unintended consequences if stablecoins replace traditional deposits too quickly.

"The Brazilian economy is very dependent on credit, and that involves the banking multiplier, demand deposits," Antunes said. "If we migrate everything 100% to the world of stablecoins, we could have a crash within what has been established."

The concern is not abstract in Brazil, one of the world's largest crypto markets. Tax authority data have shown stablecoins make up the bulk of the crypto assets Brazilians declare acquiring from platforms abroad, and the Receita Federal moved in 2025 to tighten the tax treatment of stablecoins bought for use outside the country.

Why Itaú has a stake in the outcome

The warning comes from a bank with a significant stake in the result. Itaú, Latin America's largest private lender, serves about 70 million customers and held roughly R$3.2 trillion ($618 billion) in total assets at the end of the first quarter, with customer deposits standing as one of the main funding sources for its lending business. Its total funding reached R$1.67 trillion ($320 billion), including deposits, securities and borrowings.

Antunes, however, stopped short of portraying stablecoins as a threat to banks. He argued instead that stablecoins, tokenized deposits and traditional bank deposits each play distinct roles within the financial system, and that problems arise only if one attempts to replace the others too quickly.

"This is not the fault of banks, it is not the fault of the stablecoin, of the tokenized deposit," Antunes said. "This is how our economy has grown over the past years and what it is based on. So you can't give a radical shock to what has been built."

Itaú has been steadily expanding its digital assets business. After developing its own cryptocurrency custody infrastructure, the bank launched retail crypto trading in 2023 and has since grown the platform to include more than a dozen digital assets. It has also become increasingly involved in tokenization, participating in an industry-led pilot that tests blockchain-based issuance, transfers and settlement of capital-market assets — work that runs alongside the central bank's Drex initiative, a blockchain-based digital real whose pilot phases have tested similar tokenized settlement use cases with consortia of Brazilian banks.

Parallel to the US debate

Antunes' argument touches on one of the main points of friction in Washington around the CLARITY Act, legislation that would establish a broader regulatory framework for digital assets in the US.

US banking groups have opposed provisions that would allow crypto firms to offer rewards on stablecoin balances, arguing that attractive returns could encourage customers to move money out of bank deposits, reducing a key source of funding for loans. The crypto industry has countered that such restrictions would protect incumbent banks from competition rather than address financial stability concerns.

The Senate ultimately sought a compromise by prohibiting rewards paid simply for holding stablecoins while allowing incentives tied to transactions and other activity. The dispute nevertheless dragged negotiations on for months and remains one of the bill's most sensitive issues as lawmakers prepare to revisit the legislation after the August recess.

Brazilian regulators are weighing a version of the same question. The central bank has opened a public consultation proposing to treat stablecoins as prepaid payment instruments, a move that would place them under the same oversight as other payment methods.

Perhaps mindful of the either-or debate playing out in Washington, Antunes cautioned against turning the discussion into a choice between banks and stablecoins.

"We have to be a little careful with radicalism at this moment, not to get too caught up in the thesis of which one is better, one or the other," he said, "and forget that the hole is much deeper here in our banking infrastructure, our economic infrastructure."

Additional reporting by Danyella Colares.

Source: CryptoNewsNet