The UK has unveiled a plan to scale tokenization across wholesale financial markets, backed by a cross-industry taskforce of 54 firms, including Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, Morgan Stanley, UBS, Coinbase, Kraken and Ripple, as well as asset manager BlackRock, according to an official sector report and announcement from the City of London Corporation and HM Treasury.
Led by Wholesale Digital Markets Champion Chris Woolard, the initiative aims to move the UK from pilot projects to live tokenized markets through coordinated action by industry, government and regulators.
According to the report, tokenization could improve market efficiency, liquidity, innovation, and resilience while enhancing the UK’s international competitiveness. It estimates that tokenization could contribute up to £33 billion in annual economic output and £14 billion in annual tax revenues by 2035, supported by a global tokenized real-world assets market projected to reach $88 trillion.
To support large-scale adoption, the report calls for the need for clear legal, regulatory, and tax frameworks, stronger interoperability across domestic and international markets, and a coordinated national strategy.
Key priorities are tokenized primary issuance, tokenized collateral and investment funds, digital payment rails, legal and regulatory certainty, interoperability standards, financial crime compliance, tax neutrality, and operational resilience, it identifies.
