Accelerating the transition to digital finance and tokenisation could bring an extra £33 billion (over $44 billion) to the UK economy, as well as £14 billion (18.7 billion) in tax revenue over the next decade, according to estimates by British bank Barclays and audit firm PwC (PricewaterhouseCoopers).
Chris Woolard, head of the UK Treasury’s Wholesale Digital Markets Working Group, said the UK would reap “huge benefits” from continuing work on areas such as issuing government bonds on blockchain and validating their use as collateral.
“This is about the UK’s right to play in the next generation of financial markets,” he said. Wallard.
Experts estimate that the international market for tokenized assets - real assets such as shares, bonds and real estate represented by tokens based on distributed ledger technology - could reach $88 trillion by 2035.
Tokenized markets offer the UK “significant opportunities” in terms of efficiency, potential for innovation, freeing up capital for development investment and protecting its international market position, a report by the Wholesale Digital Markets Working Group says.