Itaú BBA’s Technology Director in the Digital Assets sector, Vanessa Fernandes, defended at a recent event that the use of stablecoins is interesting to democratize innovation. The executive’s speech comes amidst the stablecoin scandals of recent weeks. That’s because Terra (LUNA) and TerraUSD (UST), which became major market cap currencies, ended up collapsing and showing that stablecoins may not have anything stable. In this way, a broad global debate arose among regulators who should get their hands on this market. In the case of LUNA CEO Do Kwon, he will be investigated for a possible financial crime, showing that
Itaú director defends the use of stablecoins, which are tokens
Last week, Itaú announced that its chief technology officer would participate in a global cryptocurrency event, promoted by Chainalysis. And last week, director Vanessa shared her view of the market, as well as the bank she works for. According to her, the tokenization sector is one of Itaú’s targets, a market that for now is dominated by fintechs, but that will soon have competition from the largest bank in Latin America. According to her, Itaú has even sought partnerships with cryptocurrency brokers to make products in the sector viable. She did not mention who these brokers are, or from which country. Furthermore, she said that if she is going to stake her career, she believes that tokenization is a promising sector. In this way, Vanessa defended the use of stablecoins, which are tokens backed by some asset, usually in Dollars.
Itaú invested in cryptocurrency brokerage and focus is on partnerships
Another equally interesting speech by Itaú’s CTO was about the bank having invested in a cryptocurrency brokerage in 2022. As it is a public company, the bank revealed in January 2022 an investment in a tokenization startup and cryptocurrency brokerage, a case of the Kinea Investimentos, Corporate Venture Capital of Itaú Unibanco. Anyway, recently the bank invested in XP Investimentos, which soon announced its return to the cryptocurrency market for the sale of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. It is not yet clear whether this is the investment cited by the CTO. In addition, an heir to Itaú invested in a platform for the purchase and sale of cryptocurrencies as well, showing that the subject is already of great interest to the bank and involved with it. At the Chainalysis event, Vanessa said it was good for Itaú to position itself in the sector before its competitors, who are not yet that interested. The executive made it clear that this movement has been amplified by the bank, being increasingly a reality built with partnerships, which is the fundamental point for expansion in the sector. In another question, she did not rule out the possibility of Itaú also working with NFTs, as large companies have been observing the sector. However, she said there was concern about the consequences of a large bank getting involved with cryptocurrencies, which could have both good and bad effects, as yet unknown. All the executive’s speeches were during the panel “Emerging trends in Latin America”.
