A projection has emerged that Britain could generate annual economic gains of up to 33 billion pounds (about 65 trillion won) by 2035 if it establishes itself as a global leader in the tokenised finance market. The UK government aims to issue its first digital gilt in 2027 and plans to speed up building financial market infrastructure that links the issuance, trading and settlement of tokenised bonds.

Cointelegraph, a blockchain outlet, reported on July 13 local time that Chris Woolard, appointed by the UK Treasury to drive its digital markets strategy, set issuing a digital gilt in the first quarter of 2027 and expanding the tokenised financial market as key tasks in his first policy report.

The report said the goal is to move tokenisation beyond the level of pilot projects and embed it as real financial market infrastructure. It proposed launching a proof-of-concept project over the next 12 months to apply blockchain to repo transactions, in which cash is raised using securities as collateral. It also stressed that tokenised gilts should evolve beyond simple issuance into a structure that enables trading, settlement and use as collateral.

The report defined the task at hand as "moving from pilot to scale, from planning to execution". It said that if tokenised securities are not actually traded or used as collateral, their market value can only be limited, and proposed that the Bank of England should recognise digital gilts as central bank collateral assets. It added that follow-on issuance should continue after the first digital gilt sale and that actual secondary market trading should be activated.

The UK government's push for digital gilts is not a first. The UK government first announced a digital gilt pilot plan in November 2024, and in July 2025 unveiled plans for on-chain settlement, over-the-counter trading and the creation of a secondary market. It then selected HSBC's digital asset platform Orion as the pilot support platform in February this year.

The report is being assessed as taking existing plans a step further by presenting a detailed timeline and ways to use the instruments.

Market participants are also backing the feasibility of real-world use for tokenised financial products. Ripple, which took part in drafting the report, assessed that on-chain funds, bonds and repo markets are no longer at the experimental stage, calling them "cheaper, faster and more efficient" than existing systems. It argued that the tokenised financial market has the competitiveness to replace existing capital market structures.

Payment infrastructure is also being built. Fnality, a British blockchain payment infrastructure company, launched a pound-based wholesale payment system linked to central bank reserves last year. The system was designed to support real-time repo transactions, settlement of tokenised securities and cross-currency payments.

The industry sees that if such payment infrastructure is built, tokenised bond and money market transactions could be run faster and more efficiently.

Looking ahead, market attention is expected to focus on the timing of actual digital gilt issuance, whether a secondary market will be opened, and whether the Bank of England will recognise tokenised gilts as central bank collateral assets. An analysis has emerged that if institution-building and market infrastructure development proceed on the timeline set out in the report, Britain's tokenisation strategy could expand beyond pilot projects into real trading structures in the bond market and short-term money markets.