BlackRock, Goldman Sachs, and other giants have all jumped in. This UK round of tokenized repo is, for once, starting to feel real—let’s see whether they can move the traditional finance “moat” onto the blockchain.

A tokenization working group backed by the City of London and led by the UK Treasury will spend one year promoting practical tokenized use cases in the UK’s financial markets, with initial focus on tokenised repo. Participating institutions include BlackRock, Goldman Sachs, HSBC, J.P. Morgan, Morgan Stanley, and UBS. The report says the UK needs to accelerate the development of tokenization market infrastructure to maintain its position in global wholesale financial markets.