B3 Tokenized Assets Infrastructure Due Early 2027 as ETF Investors Near One Million
Brazil · Markets
Key Facts
- —What happened B3, the company that runs Brazil’s main securities exchange, set out two plans at its B3 Week event in São Paulo.
- —The timetable Tokenization infrastructure is due to be ready at the start of 2027, on the exchange’s own account.
- —What gets tokenized Listed shares first, then collateral, with debentures, bonds and receivables certificates named as candidates.
- —The catch Infrastructure being ready is not trading going live; in July the exchange described early 2027 as the start of testing.
- —The other number Brazil’s exchange-traded fund market reached 929,000 investors in August 2026, holding about US$27.6 billion.
- —Why it matters Faster settlement and longer trading hours are the promise, but no tokenized product is available to buy today.
The company that runs Brazil’s only stock exchange says its blockchain plumbing will be ready at the start of 2027. Its fund market is already growing fast.
B3 tokenized assets should have working infrastructure behind them at the start of 2027, an exchange executive said at B3 Week 2026. B3 is the company that runs Brazil’s main securities exchange, in São Paulo.
The same week, the exchange reported that Brazil’s exchange-traded fund market had reached 929,000 investors. Both announcements came at B3 Week 2026, the company’s own conference.
What the exchange actually said
Felipe Paiva is Director of Customer Relations and Retail at B3. He said the company was advancing with its platform, its stablecoin and tokenized instruments in Brazil.
By the start of next year, he said, B3 would be prepared to build new use cases, including tokenized collateral. That is a statement about readiness, not about a commercial launch.
In July the framing was narrower. At the Expert XP conference on 23 July 2026, Paiva said B3 intended to begin tokenization tests in early 2027.
The difference matters to anyone timing a trade. Infrastructure being ready, testing beginning and commercial trading going live are three separate dates.
What B3 tokenized assets actually are
A tokenized asset is a financial instrument represented digitally and recorded on a blockchain. The instruments B3 has named are equities, debentures, public and private bonds, and securitised receivables certificates known as CRIs and CRAs.
Debentures are corporate bonds issued under Brazilian law. CRIs and CRAs are certificates backed by pools of receivables.
B3 tokenized assets will begin with listed equities and tokenized collateral, the narrower focus named for 2027. Collateral here means the assets investors deposit to back their positions in the market.
B3 held R$729 billion (about US$141.5 billion) in deposited collateral on 14 September 2026. Tokenizing it would mean digital representations of ordinary shares, convertible back into the originals.
The exchange is also building B3RL, a stablecoin pegged to the Brazilian real. A stablecoin is a digital token whose value is fixed to a currency.
B3RL is intended to settle tokenized transactions, and in July was described as launching within months. Round-the-clock trading is part of the stated ambition.
No specific approval from Brazil’s securities regulator or its central bank has been named as a condition for the platform. That is not true of every B3 product.
The exchange’s event contracts, a separate line, did need authorisation from the CVM, the securities regulator. That authorisation is restricted to professional investors.
The second announcement
An exchange-traded fund is a listed fund that tracks an index and trades like a share. Brazil’s ETF market reached 929,000 investors in August 2026.
That is a 39 percent increase over the preceding twelve months, implying roughly 668,000 investors a year earlier. Assets under management stood at R$142 billion (about US$27.56 billion).
There are 219 locally listed ETFs and 312 global ETFs available through BDRs. BDRs are Brazilian depositary receipts, locally traded certificates backed by foreign securities.
The number of products is up 55 percent year on year. The figures were presented at ETF Day, part of B3 Week 2026.
The global products let a Brazilian investor hold foreign index funds through a local listing. No foreign brokerage account is required.
Luiz Masagão, Vice-President of Products and Customers at B3, called the growth figures exponential. He added that the industry still has a great deal of room to grow.
Masagão also said that within five years up to 5 percent of Brazilian fund industry assets could move into ETFs. That would be more than R$500 billion (about US$97.0 billion).
Fabiana Perobelli, B3 Superintendent of Client Relations, pointed to market makers as the precondition for liquidity. A market maker is a firm contracted to quote continuous buying and selling prices.
Such firms stand on both sides of the order book all session. Without them, a newly listed fund can trade thinly and at wide spreads.
Why the two announcements belong together
Both are about the cost of holding and moving an asset. An ETF bundles many securities into one cheap listed product.
Tokenization aims at the plumbing underneath: the record of who owns what, and how fast a trade settles. Marcos Viriato of Parfin told the July conference that the technology exists and has been validated.
What remained, he said, were the regulatory points and the settlement infrastructure. That is the gap between a working system and a market anyone can trade in.
Neither plan depends on the other. Together they describe an exchange widening its retail base and rebuilding its back end at the same time.
What it means for an ordinary investor
For a retail investor, B3 tokenized assets change nothing today. There is no tokenized share to buy, no platform to open and no published fee schedule.
The fund numbers are the part with immediate content. Nearly a million Brazilians now hold an ETF, across 531 locally available products.
A tokenized share would still be a share, with the same issuer and the same rights. What changes is the record of ownership and the speed of settlement.
If tokenization arrives as described, what a saver would notice is settlement speed and trading hours. Neither has a confirmed start date.
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Frequently Asked Questions
What is B3?
B3 is the company that operates Brazil’s main securities exchange, based in São Paulo. Shares, funds and derivatives all list there, and the company also runs the settlement and collateral systems behind those markets. It held R$729 billion (about US$141.5 billion) of deposited collateral on 14 September 2026. Its decisions about market infrastructure reach every security listed there.
What is a tokenized asset?
It is an ordinary financial instrument, such as a share or a bond, represented as a digital record on a blockchain. The underlying asset does not change; what changes is how ownership is recorded and how quickly a transfer can settle. B3 has said its tokenized shares would be convertible back into the traditional versions. The commercial benefit claimed for the model is faster settlement and the possibility of trading outside normal exchange hours.
What is an ETF, and why are Brazilians buying them?
An exchange-traded fund is a fund that holds a basket of securities and trades on an exchange like a single share. It is usually cheaper than an actively managed fund because it simply tracks an index. In Brazil the market reached 929,000 investors in August 2026, up 39 percent in twelve months, with R$142 billion (about US$27.56 billion) under management. There are now 219 locally listed products and 312 foreign ones available through depositary receipts.
Why would a stock exchange build its own stablecoin?
A stablecoin is a digital token whose value is fixed to a currency, in this case the Brazilian real. B3 is developing one, called B3RL, to settle transactions in tokenized instruments. Settling a digital trade with a digital currency avoids waiting for the conventional banking system to move cash. In July the exchange described the token as launching within months, but no firm date has been published.
Sources: Bitnotícias on the B3 Week tokenization timetable, InfoMoney on the earlier plan to begin testing in 2027, Cointelegraph Brasil on the round-the-clock trading ambition, B3’s Bora Investir on the 929,000 fund investors, Gazeta Brasil on assets under management and product counts, E-Investidor on the five-year migration estimate
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