The UK government named a 54-firm task force on July 13 to push tokenization into the country’s wholesale financial markets, seating BlackRock, Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan and Morgan Stanley alongside crypto companies Circle, Ripple and Coinbase. The task force appears in the first report from Chris Woolard, HM Treasury’s Wholesale Digital Markets Champion, addressed to Chancellor Rachel Reeves. Its first assignment is to build a live tokenized repo trial, putting regulated banks and crypto firms in the same working group for the first time.
How the Task Force Came Together
Woolard spent eight years at the Financial Conduct Authority, including a stint as interim chief executive in 2020, before taking on the tokenization role in April 2026. According to the City of London Corporation, it is running the task force as secretariat, working alongside TheCityUK, UK Finance, the Investment Association, and Innovate Finance.
The task force will build live, end-to-end use cases starting with a tokenized repo over the next 12 months, with nine action groups setting standards across the market value chain. The Global City projects a live repo trial by spring 2027, with commodities and other asset classes added later that year. The report also builds on DIGIT, the UK’s tokenized government bond, which is projected to launch in the first quarter of 2027 inside the Bank of England and FCA’s Digital Securities Sandbox.
The 54-firm list also includes Kraken’s Payward entity, Chainalysis, Fireblocks and Wintermute, alongside banks and infrastructure players like HSBC, Barclays, UBS and DTCC. Kirit Bhatia, chief digital assets officer at Banking Circle, said the real obstacle is payment plumbing, not token issuance, since tokenized markets need real-time settlement and interoperability across stablecoins, deposits and fiat rails.
What This Means for Crypto Firms Operating in the UK
For companies like Circle, Ripple and Coinbase, a seat on this task force means direct input into the rules governing how tokenized assets move through UK wholesale markets, not just the terms banks and regulators set without them. Readers tracking UK crypto policy can follow ongoing coverage on our news hub as the nine action groups begin setting technical and legal standards over the coming months.
What to Watch Next
HM Treasury has the report open for public feedback until September 4, 2026, with membership for the nine action groups due to be finalized by the end of that month. Woolard’s second report to the Chancellor is expected in July 2027 and should show whether the repo trial is on track to meet its spring 2027 target.
What this means for you: The tokenized repo trial due in spring 2027 will be the first live test of banks and crypto firms operating on the same regulated rails, worth watching if you’re tracking how mainstream finance adopts crypto infrastructure.
