Overview
- Chris Woolard has convened a 54‑member Wholesale Digital Markets Taskforce to deliver a 12‑month plan that shifts tokenization work from pilots to live use cases.
- The taskforce’s first practical target is a full end‑to‑end tokenized repo trial by spring 2027 and progress on a government digital gilt to test issuance on ledgers.
- Major banks, asset managers, market infrastructure firms and crypto companies including BlackRock, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, Ripple and Coinbase are in the group.
- Regulators including the Bank of England and the FCA are pushing sandbox work toward production but unresolved issues remain on legal ownership, settlement finality, custody, interoperability and resilience.
- Consultants cited in the plan project large economic gains by 2035 but those outcomes depend on clear rules, cross‑market liquidity, technical integration and international coordination.