Latin America’s Largest Investment Bank Offers Crypto Services

BTG Pactual, which is the largest investment bank in the Latin American region, started crypto brokerage offerings on the 15th of August 2022. Many banks in the region have been in the race to plant their feet in the digital assets space solidly.

Global Finance Encourages Innovation

With the high level of uncertainty in the global economy, there has been a significant rise in the demand for digital assets in Latin America. BTG’s announcement came on the same day when XP, another competitor in the space, also announced that it had launched its crypto service.

BTG’s crypto service arm called “Mynt” will be in the market as a completely different product. But exchanges have faced restrictions with regard to withdrawals and deposits as a result of regulatory instructions. 

BTG’s head of digital assets, Andre Portilho, said the firm is working to stabilize these features. The firm plans to launch in a few weeks or a few months. Portilho thinks that clients will be willing to deposit their assets into BTG, given that there had been an issue with restrictions on withdrawals.

Much more than that, Portilho stated further that BTG is trying to incorporate stablecoins and list them on their new platform. He, however, did not make comments as to whether it is going to be the bank’s native token or a stablecoin from another issuer entirely.

More Firms to Come?

It is said that BTG Pactual’s Mynt platform will be supporting just five crypto assets at first. These five crypto assets are Bitcoin, Ethereum, Cardano, Polkadot, and Solana. Portilho said the firm would work to have more assets listed, but it depends on the demand of customers and the company’s internal assessment.

It should be noted that Portilho also declined to comment on the future price of any of those assets. A local news media, Portal do Bitcoin, quoted Portilho as saying that he does not know if the market has bottomed just yet.

But it is of interest that he made comments about Bitcoin’s cycle and the recent bullish run that followed it. He said the halving phase is a Bitcoin price-driving myth. It was important at some point in the past, but it is no longer the case today.

The largest investment bank in Latin America has now hopped onto the crypto service train. This is an open impetus for more financial players in the region to launch their participation.