The UK government published a formal roadmap on July 13 for moving wholesale financial markets onto blockchain infrastructure, setting hard deadlines and attaching economic projections that frame the plan as a competitive necessity rather than an optional experiment.
Chris Woolard, HM Treasury's Wholesale Digital Markets Champion, delivered the first report to the Chancellor on that date. The headline figures come from estimates by Barclays, PwC, and Boston Consulting Group cited in the document: up to £33 billion in additional annual economic output and £14 billion in yearly tax revenue by 2035, contingent on the UK building the required infrastructure fast enough. The global tokenized real-world asset market currently sits between $23 billion and $36 billion depending on the source. The report, citing the same forecasters, projects that figure could reach $88 trillion by 2035, equivalent to roughly 16% of global investable assets.
The UK processes over £4 trillion worth of securities on average per day. Woolard's report opens from that position of existing market dominance, arguing the UK's role in FX, OTC derivatives, and repo markets is precisely what is at stake if the transition to tokenized markets happens elsewhere.
DIGIT sets a Q1 2027 target for the UK's first blockchain government bond
The Digital Gilt Instrument pilot, which would make the UK the first G7 country to issue a blockchain-native government bond, is expected to reach first issuance in the first quarter of 2027. HSBC was appointed as platform provider in February and runs the pilot on its Orion platform inside the Bank of England's Digital Securities Sandbox. That sandbox currently comprises 16 firms including Euroclear and the London Stock Exchange Group, all operating under regulatory supervision for tokenized issuance, trading, and settlement.
UK authorities have recently confirmed that Digital Securities Sandbox firms can now apply to use specific stablecoins as a settlement asset, a decision that expands the practical options available to DIGIT bidders.
The Great British Tokenized Deposits pilot, which runs through mid-2026 and involves six major UK banks including Barclays, Lloyds, and NatWest, has confirmed it will support DIGIT bidders as an on-chain payment supplier. In January, Lloyds completed what was described as the UK's first gilt purchase settled with tokenized deposits, issued on the public Canton Network, buying a tokenized gilt from FCA-regulated exchange Archax. Those deposits continued to earn interest and remained covered by the Financial Services Compensation Scheme.
A 54-firm taskforce with nine action groups and one live trade to deliver
Woolard's report establishes a cross-industry taskforce of 54 firms to drive the roadmap over the next 12 months. Named participants include BlackRock, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, HSBC, Coinbase, Circle, and Ripple. The taskforce is organized into nine action groups covering primary issuance, tokenized collateral, tokenized funds, payment rails, legal certainty, and financial crime compliance. A second report on DLT interoperability standards is due from Woolard to the Chancellor by July 2027.
The taskforce has a single concrete target to meet before that second report: a live, end-to-end tokenized repo transaction by spring 2027. That transaction is meant to demonstrate the full chain, from issuance through settlement, rather than test individual components in isolation.
Payment infrastructure is the part the report identifies as most urgent
The document pushes for settlement using stablecoins, tokenized bank deposits, and central bank money. Woolard frames the cash side of tokenized transactions as the weak link that could constrain adoption regardless of progress on the asset side.
The report frames the legal and regulatory dimension as equally urgent. It calls for clear legal, tax, and regulatory treatment of tokenized and digitally native assets so that institutions can commit the private investment the infrastructure requires. Without that clarity, the report argues, standards and frameworks will be set offshore, which would gradually erode the UK's standing as an open financial center.
Dayo Paul
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