Largest banks in Brazil Bradesco Launches Tokenized Credit Notes


One of the largest banks in Brazil and Latin America, Bradesco, has embraced the crypto era by being one of the first organizations to use blockchain technology in its operations there. The first batch of bank credit notes, worth about $2 million, were tokenized by the bank on January 13, 2023, as part of a pilot initiative to evaluate the viability of new technologies.
In collaboration with Bolsa OTC and utilizing a regulatory sandbox that permits financial institutions to conduct this kind of test using new technologies, Bradesco's operation—which it claims is the first one overseen and allowed by the nation's central bank—was conducted.
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."
Some observers view asset tokenization, the act of embodying real-world assets in blockchains, as the next development in market technology. According to a report released in December by BCG and ADDX, the technology will present a $16 trillion market opportunity by 2030 thus it may become a trend for negotiations in the financial markets.
Bradesco is the second Brazilian bank to try out tokenization and tokenized assets. Itau Unibanco was the pioneer, conducting a series of tokenization tests in July by releasing bank assets to its staff and customers.
Some observers view asset tokenization, the act of embodying real-world assets in blockchains, as the next development in market technology. According to a report released in December by BCG and ADDX, the technology will present a $16 trillion market opportunity by 2030 thus it may become a trend for negotiations in the financial markets.
The creation of Itau's own tokenization unit, which would be focused on providing tokenization services to clients and enabling them to tokenize and sell these assets utilizing a platform created and managed by the bank, was also announced at that time.
More banks will reportedly add tokenization to their service offerings in the future, according to local sources. Many of these institutions had hoped that the recent cryptocurrency law, which was approved in December, would provide a clearer picture of the compliance requirements for providing these tokenization services.

Joyashree Dey
CBW - External Analyst
INDIA