The UK Treasury has published the first report from its Wholesale Digital Markets Champion, Chris Woolard, announcing the formation of a task force of 54 companies to drive the implementation of tokenization in British financial markets. The task force, backed by the City of London Corporation, aims to move from pilot testing to live market use within a year.
Task Force Structure and Focus Areas
The Digital Markets Industry Task Force is organized around four core action groups covering primary issuance and funds, secondary markets, collateral and prudential standards, and financial market infrastructure and cash settlement. These groups will work cross-functionally, using tokenized repo transactions as a model case to demonstrate end-to-end trading. A coordination group chaired by Woolard will oversee the work.
Four additional working groups will address cross-cutting issues: tax, legal, financial crime and identity, and resilience. A ninth group is dedicated to communication, promoting the UK as a "global center for digital assets." The task force priorities include expanding markets through tokenized repos, investment funds, and collateral assets; building operational wholesale settlement infrastructure and regulatory standards; enhancing legal clarity, tax frameworks, financial crime controls, and digital ID; and promoting interoperability and standardization both domestically and internationally.
Major Financial and Crypto Firms Participate
The task force includes major financial institutions such as BlackRock, J.P. Morgan, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, HSBC, UBS, and Barclays. Crypto-related firms also join: Coinbase, Circle, Ripple, Ava Labs, Kraken, Fireblocks, and Chainalysis. This broad coalition underscores the UK's ambition to lead in tokenized finance.
Market Potential and Economic Impact
Tokenized assets globally totaled about $30 billion in 2025, just 0.01% of investable assets, but the market grew 300% that year. Boston Consulting Group estimates the tokenized real-world asset (RWA) market could reach $88 trillion by 2035, roughly 16% of investable assets, far exceeding the current ~$3 trillion crypto and stablecoin market. For the UK economy, the report projects annual benefits of up to £33 billion ($71.7 trillion yen) and additional tax revenue of £14 billion ($3 trillion yen) by 2035.
Urgency to Maintain Global Leadership
Woolard, former chair of the Financial Conduct Authority, argues that tokenization offers a critical opportunity to improve trading efficiency, foster financial innovation, and maintain the UK's competitiveness as an international financial center. He warned that the tokenization market is subject to network effects, so the UK must move as fast as the most agile countries in building regulatory frameworks and market infrastructure. The report stresses that merely tokenizing existing financial products is insufficient; the UK must also create digital-native assets and programmable assets to generate new asset classes and market models. Combining these innovations with the digitization of traditional markets could scale tokenization while upgrading the financial ecosystem, solidifying the UK's global financial center status.