The UK Government has announced the creation of a new role, the Digital Markets Champion, to accelerate the digitalisation of wholesale financial markets.
According to Bloomberg, this position will coordinate the private sector’s efforts in the field of tokenization and drive the digital finance transformation in the country.
Speaking at the Digital Assets Week conference in London on Wednesday, Lucy Rigby, Under Secretary for Economic Affairs at the Treasury, stated that the new ambassador will take on the role of convening, guiding and coordinating with the private sector the tokenization process of wholesale financial markets in the UK.
Tokenization refers to the process of issuing, trading and exchanging traditional financial assets, such as stocks and bonds, in digital form using blockchain technology, which forms the basis of cryptocurrencies.
The government will also oversee the phase-out of paper shares by establishing a new working group, the Dematerialization Market Action Taskforce. This step aims to support the process of issuing and managing financial assets entirely digitally.
As part of its Wholesale Financial Markets Digital Strategy, announced in July, the UK aims to modernize its asset issuance, trading, clearing, and settlement systems with technologies such as blockchain and artificial intelligence. As part of this strategy, the government is also working on a new initiative called Digital Government Bonds (DIGIT). These digital bonds, which will be represented on the blockchain, will enable the digital issuance of the UK’s sovereign debt instruments.
*This is not investment advice.