Putting financial markets onchain could add £33B to the UK's economy

Putting financial markets onchain could add £33B to the UK's economy. So what's stopping us?

The UK Treasury's newly appointed Digital Markets Champion, Christopher Woolard CBE, says the UK has a significant opportunity if it tokenizes Gilt issuance and enables tokenized Gilts to be used as eligible collateral: "This is about the UK’s right to play in the next generation of financial markets"

➡️ Why this matters

The biggest opportunity in tokenization isn't issuing another digital asset. It's modernizing the plumbing of financial markets.

Other major jurisdictions are already moving with a focus on the most impactful lever:

🇺🇸 The US is seeing industry efforts, led by institutions including DTCC, to move the entire $70T US equities markets onchain. This makes sense for the US as it has already more or less won the stablecoin race given USD dominance on the global stage as the preferred reserve currency.

🇪🇺 The ECB has recognized that Europe is unlikely to win the global stablecoin race. Instead, it is prioritizing tokenized central bank money for wholesale financial markets, enabling DLT settlement for institutional transactions.

🇬🇧 Until now, much of the UK's policy focus has centred on reserve requirements for GBP stablecoins. While important, that is unlikely to be the UK's strongest competitive advantage in digital finance.

Christopher Woolard's 12-month roadmap identifies nine priority areas where tokenization can transform UK financial markets. One of the most consequential objectives is to demonstrate by next year that tokenized assets can be used as repo collateral to raise cash.

Repo sits at the heart of wholesale financial markets. Enabling tokenized collateral in repo unlocks collateral mobility, balance-sheet efficiency and faster capital markets operations without requiring investors to change the assets they own.

According to the latest report from ISDA and Global Digital Finance, the business case for tokenized collateral is becoming difficult to ignore:

 • ~17% lower HQLA requirements

 • Up to 33% lower SA-CCR exposure

 • Up to 200bps reduction in intraday liquidity buffers

 • Hundreds of millions of dollars in capital savings

 • Meaningful revenue upside for dealer banks

If the UK wants to demonstrate that tokenization has moved beyond pilots and into systemically important financial markets, repo is one of the smartest places to start.

It aligns with where the largest economic benefits exist, where institutional demand already exists, and where the UK has genuine competitive strengths.

✅ Explore more research on tokenized funds, stablecoins, tokenized deposits, market infrastructure, and collateral mobility:

• Tokenized MMF

• Tokenized Deposits

• Tokenized Securities

• Stablecoins

• Collateral Mobility

• Market Infrastrcture

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