Britain could add 33 billion British pounds ($44 billion) to its annual economic output by 2035 by becoming a leader in tokenized financial markets, according to a government-backed industry task force.
Estimation appears In the first report by wholesale digital markets champion Chris Woollard, who was appointed by HM Treasury to help implement the government’s digital markets strategy.
Developed with an industry task force, the report lays out a 12-month plan to test blockchain in financial transactions where securities are used to borrow cash. It also calls for the UK to issue its first tokenized government bond by the first quarter of 2027.
The industry task force brings together more than 50 companies from traditional finance and crypto, including BlackRock, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, Morgan Stanley, HSBC, UBS, Coinbase, Circle, Ripple, Kraken, DTCC and Euroclear.
The roadmap seeks to move UK tokenization beyond isolated pilots and into live markets where securities can be traded, settled and used as collateral. The report states that work now needs to move “from pilot to scale” and “from scale to implementation”.
Ripple, which is listed among the task force’s industry members, Supported by initiative on Monday. “Onchain funds, bonds and repos are not experiments,” the company said, adding that such instruments are already proving to be “cheaper, better and faster than their legacy equivalents”.
UK builds on digital solvency and settlement initiatives.
Digital government bonds, or gilts, are not a new proposition in themselves. Britain first announced Digital Gilt Instrument Pilot in November 2024.
The July 2025 update then outlines plans for on-chain settlement, over-the-counter trading and secondary market development. On February 12, the government appointed HSBC’s Orion platform to support the pilot.
The new report adds a timetable and expands the required role for the financial instrument. In addition to the demand for issuance, the report later explores digital-gilt offerings, live secondary market trading and eligibility for use as central bank collateral.
The report said tokenized securities have limited value unless they can be traded or used to raise cash, and urged the Bank of England to accept digital gilts as collateral.
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The UK also has a blockchain-based wholesale payment infrastructure that can support such markets. In December 2023, London-based Fnality launched a sterling-like payment system linked to central bank reserves, designed to support real-time repo, tokenized securities settlement and cross-currency payments.
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