The UK is about to do something no major economy has done before: issue a fully digital sovereign bond. Finance Minister Rachel Reeves made the announcement during her Mansion House speech on July 14, 2026, confirming that the Digital Gilt Instrument, or DIGIT, will go live by early 2027.
What DIGIT actually is
A conventional gilt is a UK government bond, the kind that’s been traded on paper ledgers and legacy settlement systems for decades. DIGIT is the same thing, structurally, but built natively on distributed ledger technology from the ground up.
HSBC was selected to provide the platform for DIGIT through its Orion digital assets infrastructure. That selection came after a competitive tender process that concluded in February 2026.
This is not a crypto project. DIGIT runs on a permissioned DLT infrastructure, meaning access is controlled and participants are vetted. No public blockchain, no native tokens. The Bank of England and the Financial Conduct Authority have both been embedded in the process from the start, with the two regulators establishing a Digital Securities Sandbox specifically to house DIGIT’s development.
