The Bank of England and FCA have published a shared regulatory vision for tokenised UK wholesale markets, opening a 12-week consultation on sterling settlement, DLT platforms and supervisory boundaries.
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London — The Bank of England and the Financial Conduct Authority have jointly opened a 12-week Call for Input on the future of tokenisation in UK wholesale markets, setting out for the first time a shared regulatory vision covering tokenised securities, deposits and the sterling rails that would settle them.
The paper, published on 18 May, is the most concrete signal yet that the two authorities intend to coordinate rather than compete on distributed-ledger market infrastructure. It follows months of industry complaints that overlapping consultations from Threadneedle Street and Stratford were forcing London-based banks and asset managers to prepare two parallel compliance tracks.
At its core the document recognises three settlement assets for wholesale tokenised transactions: central bank money via a future wholesale digital pound or a synchronised RTGS link, tokenised commercial bank deposits issued by PRA-authorised firms, and FCA-regulated sterling stablecoins issued under the new cryptoasset regime. The authorities make clear they see all three coexisting, not one displacing the others.
The Call for Input also signals openness to permissioned DLT platforms operating outside the existing CSD framework during a defined transition, provided issuers, custodians and platform operators meet equivalent prudential and conduct standards. Respondents have until 11 August 2026 to submit views.
London-based banks have argued for two years that without a clear UK regime, tokenised bond and money-market fund activity would migrate to Luxembourg, Singapore or Switzerland. Several Tier 1 lenders have already piloted tokenised gilt repo and intraday tokenised deposits inside the Bank's Digital Securities Sandbox, and they have been the loudest voices pushing for a settlement-asset decision.
The paper deliberately leaves several issues unresolved. Chief among them: whether the wholesale digital pound will use a single Bank-operated ledger or a synchronisation layer between RTGS and private DLT platforms, and how interoperability with EU and US tokenised markets will be supervised under existing equivalence arrangements.
Daily Crypto News UK understands that a follow-up consultation specifically on the wholesale digital pound design is expected in the autumn, ahead of any final decision on whether to build.
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