Banco do Brasil Executes Latin America’s First Blockchain-Based Structured Note Trade

Banco do Brasil (BB), Brazil’s oldest bank, announced a $5 million investment in a digital native structured note issued by Citigroup. The transaction was executed on Euroclear’s Digital Financial Market Infrastructure (D‑FMI) platform, representing the first institutional blockchain‑based securities trade in Latin America.

Key Aspects of the Transaction

• Instrument: Digital native structured note issued by Citigroup.
• Platform: Euroclear’s D‑FMI, a blockchain‑enabled settlement system.
• Investment amount: $5 million from BB’s proprietary treasury.
• Significance: First Latam‑wide institutional trade of a blockchain‑based note, bypassing traditional settlement steps.

Strategic Rationale

BB described the move as part of its commitment to innovation and to monitoring transformative trends in the financial sector. The bank highlighted benefits such as native digitization of assets, reduced operational steps, enhanced transaction traceability, and the potential to reshape trading, settlement, and asset‑management models.

Industry Perspectives

Francisco Lassalvia, Vice President of Wholesale at BB, called the initiative a long‑term structural trend that will help build standards, governance, and infrastructure for a new generation of digital assets. Roksolana Dushynska, Variable Income Structuring Manager at Citi, emphasized that distributed ledger technology delivers greater efficiency, transparency, and accessibility for investors.

Broader Context

The bank’s participation follows recent involvement in the pilot phase of Brazil’s central bank digital currency (Drex), where BB proposed an offline payment solution. As a publicly traded entity with significant government ownership, BB’s adoption of blockchain‑based securities could encourage wider institutional use across the region.