finance
UK government forms tokenization taskforce with 54 financial firms
A 54-firm group backed by the City of London Corporation will develop live tokenization use cases in UK wholesale markets over the next year. The project is led by HM Treasury's Wholesale Digital Markets Champion and focuses initially on tokenised repo.
Jul 13, 7:40 AM·1m read2 sources
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A 54-firm group that includes BlackRock, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, Morgan Stanley, HSBC and UBS will spend the next year developing live tokenization use cases across UK financial markets. The initiative is led by HM Treasury's Wholesale Digital Markets Champion Chris Woolard, the former chair of the FCA. The group is backed by the City of London Corporation and will begin with tokenised repo.
Market estimates and economic projections Boston Consulting Group estimates the tokenised real-world assets market could reach $88 trillion by 2035, compared with the current crypto and stablecoin market of $3 trillion. Woolard's report predicts the initiative could add up to 33 billion pounds in annual economic output and 14 billion pounds in annual tax revenue by 2035.
Implementation challenges Kirit Bhatia, Chief Digital Assets Officer at Banking Circle, said tokenised markets will need payment infrastructure that supports real-time settlement, cross-border movement, multiple forms of regulated money and interoperability between stablecoins, tokenised deposits and existing fiat rails.
Woolard said tokenised markets are "a network game" and the UK's place in that game is not guaranteed. He added that the UK needs to move at the speed of the most agile players to secure a stake in developing the approach for international markets.
