DAI+0.01%
Market Analysis
HM Treasury’s Tokenization Push: £33bn Target, and a 54-Firm Coalition that Includes BlackRock
Chris Woolard's HM Treasury report launches a tokenized repo taskforce with BlackRock, Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan targeting £33bn in annual economic output by 2035.
Editorial disclosureRead more
All reviews, research, news and assessments of any kind on The Tokenist are compiled using a strict editorial review process by our editorial team. Neither our writers nor our editors receive direct compensation of any kind to publish information on tokenist.com. Our company, Tokenist Media LLC, is community supported and may receive a small commission when you purchase products or services through links on our website. Click here for a full list of our partners and an in-depth explanation on how we get paid.
HM Treasury’s Wholesale Digital Markets Champion, Chris Woolard, published the first of two reports on July 13, 2026, establishing a 54-firm cross-industry tokenization task force backed by the City of London Corporation, with BlackRock, Goldman Sachs, HSBC, JPMorgan, Morgan Stanley, and UBS among the named members.
The initiative targets up to £33Bn in annual economic output and £14Bn in annual tax revenue by 2035, projections that frame this not as a regulatory consultation exercise but as a structural buildout of UK wholesale financial markets infrastructure.
Woolard, the former chair of the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) who spent eight years in that role, addressed the report to the UK Chancellor. His framing was explicit: tokenized markets are a network game with no guaranteed position for London.
The taskforce gives the UK government a named institutional coalition to move beyond policy frameworks and into live use cases, with workstream assignments targeted for September 2026 and a comprehensive second report due July 2027.
Tokenized Repo as Flagship Pilot: The Operational Structure Behind the 54-Firm Coalition and Its Spring 2027 Target
The task force will focus on tokenized repo, a short-duration, collateralized lending method that involves trillions in daily wholesale market transactions, making it ideal for DLT to reduce counterparty risk and margin cycles.
Over the next year, the group will explore live tokenization use cases in UK financial markets, starting with tokenized repo.
Organized through cross-industry workstreams, the initiative aims to develop standards for tokenized wholesale assets, as detailed in the HM Treasury report.
It emphasizes the competitive nature of tokenization, stressing the need for swift translation into market activity, which BlackRock has already gotten a head start on.
The Digital Securities Sandbox (DSS) is also part of the UK’s strategy to integrate tokenization into these markets, but specific staffing or timeline details are not provided.
EXPLORE: MetaMask Money Account Pays 4% APY on mUSD With Card Spending Built In
DIGIT, the Digital Securities Sandbox, and the BlackRock led Coalition’s Sovereign Asset Anchor: What the UK’s Approach Reveals About Infrastructure Control
The UK’s approach stands out with its commitment to issuing government debt in Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) form through the Digital Gilt Instrument (DIGIT), as highlighted by John Orchard.
This sovereign DLT asset serves as a risk-free anchor for pricing, margining, and settling tokenized real-world assets (RWAs), similar to the role of conventional gilts in traditional finance.
Bhatia emphasized that a tokenized repo market requires robust payment infrastructure for real-time settlement and interoperability across various currencies.
The tokenized RWA market is projected by Boston Consulting Group to reach $88 trillion by 2035, while the current crypto and stablecoin market is estimated at $3 trillion.
This positions the UK government to capture a share of this significant opportunity, with Goldman Sachs also signaling its commitment to tokenization infrastructure.
Regulatory Calendar and Competitive Positioning: What Woolard’s Report Formalizes for UK Wholesale Market Participants
Woolard’s report, directed at the incoming UK Chancellor, emphasizes the need for the UK to keep pace with agile players in the global tokenized markets to secure its position. Woolard stated, “It is a race, and the U.K. must act quickly to influence international market approaches.”
The Bank of England’s synchronization pilot, set for rollout by 2028, will connect the upgraded RTGS system to blockchain-based securities, similar to the ECB’s Pontes program, which launches in Q4 2027. This timing is crucial for wholesale market participants considering cross-border tokenized settlements.
Public feedback on Woolard’s report is open until September 4, 2026. Additionally, the BlackRock Dematerialization Market Action Taskforce (DEMAT) aims to phase out paper share certificates in favor of a more digital shareholding model, promoting modernized infrastructure across various asset classes.
DISCOVER: Goldman Sachs Targets USD/JPY at 165, in Boost for the Yen Carry Trade
Tim Baker
Tim Baker is a Senior Market Analyst at Tokenist with over a decade of experience educating readers about traditional finance, crypto and DeFi. A former equity researcher turned on-chain analyst, Tim specializes in regulatory framework shifts and institutional DeFi adoption. His work focuses on distilling complex liquidity cycles and the macro environment into actionable intelligence for the modern DIY investor.
