UK Digital Gilt Push Could Help Unlock $44B in Annual Output

The United Kingdom could add as much as 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. 

The estimate appears in the first report from Wholesale Digital Markets Champion Chris Woolard, who was appointed by HM Treasury to help implement the government’s digital markets strategy. 

Developed with an industry task force, the report sets out a 12-month plan to test blockchain in a financial transaction 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 attempts to move UK tokenization beyond isolated pilots and into live markets where securities can be traded, settled and used as collateral. The report said the task was now to move “from pilots to scale” and “from ambition to action.”

Ripple, which is listed among the task force’s industry members, backed the initiative on Monday. “Onchain funds, bonds and repo aren’t experiments,” the company said, adding that such instruments are already proving “cheaper, better and faster than their legacy equivalents.”

UK builds on digital gilt and settlement initiatives

The digital government bond, or gilt, itself is not a new proposal. The UK first announced the Digital Gilt Instrument pilot in November 2024.

This was followed by a July 2025 update outlining plans for onchain settlement, over-the-counter trading and secondary-market development. On Feb. 12, the government appointed HSBC’s Orion platform to support the pilot.

The new report adds a timetable and expands the intended role for the financial instrument. Beyond calling for issuance, the report seeks subsequent 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 could support such markets. In December 2023, London-based Fnality launched a sterling-denominated payment system tied to central bank reserves, designed to support real-time repo, tokenized securities settlement and cross-currency payments.

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