OpenAssets, a digital asset infrastructure provider, has announced a collaboration with Itaú, Latin America's largest financial institution, to advance tokenization and digital asset use cases across Brazilian capital markets. The partnership operates as a structured use case within the tokenization pilot led by ANBIMA, the Brazilian Financial and Capital Markets Association.

The joint initiative combines OpenAssets' tokenization infrastructure with Itaú's capital markets expertise, aiming to transition tokenization from early-stage exploration into practical execution. Itaú, which has been building its digital asset capabilities through initiatives such as its Itaú Digital Assets unit, brings direct operational scale to the pilot, while OpenAssets contributes infrastructure designed to support issuance, settlement, and lifecycle management of tokenized instruments.

ANBIMA is currently running a collaborative pilot initiative designed to test and standardize the end-to-end lifecycle of capital markets instruments — including issuance, trading, and settlement — on Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) networks. The pilot focuses on instruments such as debentures and investment funds, which are core components of Brazil's capital markets. Brazil's debenture market is one of the largest in Latin America, serving as a primary corporate funding instrument, which gives the pilot relevance to real-world financing flows.

The collaboration between OpenAssets and Itaú is centered on the ANBIMA tokenization pilot, with a particular emphasis on exploring the tokenization of fixed-income instruments and investment funds. The initiative encompasses the development of technical proofs of concept, advisory services on tokenization architecture and standards, and the assessment of operational and compliance frameworks intended to support the evolution of digital market infrastructure.

"The initiative of OpenAssets and Itaú is designed to explore how tokenized assets can be issued, settled and managed within the frameworks and standards financial institutions require. Brazil has been one of the most forward-looking markets in finance and it is a natural place to move tokenization from exploration to production," said Gabor Gurbacs, Chairman and CEO of OpenAssets. Gurbacs previously led digital asset strategy at VanEck, one of the firms that pursued a spot Bitcoin ETF in the United States, and his involvement signals institutional-grade intent behind the initiative.

The collaboration reflects a broader principle in OpenAssets' approach to digital asset markets: that tokenized markets advance through practical pilots and shared infrastructure rather than isolated experiments. According to the company, testing concrete use cases with institutions that operate core markets is the pathway through which tokenization becomes trusted financial infrastructure. Globally, major financial institutions including JPMorgan, HSBC, and others have launched tokenization initiatives covering bonds, deposits, and fund interests, placing Brazil's pilot within a wider competitive landscape.

Tokenization, the process of representing real-world financial assets as digital tokens on a blockchain or DLT network, has gained traction globally as financial institutions explore ways to improve efficiency in issuance, settlement, and asset management. Brazil has emerged as a notable market in this space, with its regulatory environment and active financial sector contributing to growing interest in DLT-based solutions. The country enacted a legal framework for virtual asset service providers in 2022, and the Central Bank of Brazil has been evaluating rules for tokenization and digital asset platforms, giving institutional pilots like ANBIMA's a regulatory backdrop that is still taking shape.