Key Takeaways
- A U.K. taskforce of 54 firms will pilot tokenized repo as its first live blockchain use case.
- Blackrock, JPMorgan and Circle joined a roadmap targeting UK wholesale tokenization.
- The UK sees tokenization adding up to £33B annually by 2035 through market upgrades.
UK Treasury Backs Tokenization Plan That Could Add $44 Billion by 2035
The United Kingdom is moving from tokenization policy to live market design, drawing some of the world’s largest financial institutions into a taskforce focused on blockchain-based wholesale finance.
The 54-firm group includes Blackrock, Goldman Sachs, HSBC, JPMorgan, Morgan Stanley, UBS, Barclays, Citi, State Street, Coinbase, Circle, Ripple and Wintermute. It is working under the U.K.’s Wholesale Digital Markets Champion, Chris Woolard, whose first report to the Chancellor sets out a roadmap for tokenized wholesale markets.
The taskforce will spend the next year developing practical use cases across the U.K. financial markets. Its first focus is an end-to-end tokenized repo transaction, a core piece of short-term funding markets where securities are exchanged for cash and later repurchased.
Repo Becomes the First Test Case
The report frames repo as a logical starting point because collateral movement, settlement speed, and liquidity are central to wholesale market efficiency.
The taskforce plans to set up action groups across nine areas, with an orchestration group coordinating the repo use case on blockchain. The work will include interoperability and cross-border testing, both of which are critical if tokenized markets are to move beyond isolated pilots.
The roadmap also calls for tokenization use cases in fixed income and uncleared over-the-counter derivatives. It recommends building on the U.K.’s Digital Gilt Instrument, known as DIGIT, with an initial pilot issuance no later than the first quarter of 2027.
UK Sees Large Economic Prize
The report presents tokenization as both a technology upgrade and a competitiveness issue for the City of London.
It estimates tokenized real-world assets could reach $88 trillion by 2035, compared with about $3 trillion for today’s crypto and stablecoin markets. For the U.K., the potential benefit is estimated at up to $44 billion in additional annual economic output and $18.7 billion in annual tax revenue by 2035.
The report warns that without a clear national roadmap, standards, infrastructure and liquidity could develop offshore, weakening the U.K.’s position as a global financial center. It also notes that tokenized assets represented only 0.01% of investable assets in 2025, but grew 300% that year.
For crypto markets, the significance is clear. Tokenization is no longer just a stablecoin or fund-management story. The U.K. is trying to pull blockchain infrastructure into the plumbing of repo, collateral, and settlement, where the largest pools of institutional liquidity already operate.
