The UK government has announced the creation of the position of “champion of digital markets”
Great Britain has announced the introduction of a new position – “champion of digital markets”. He will be responsible for the tokenization of financial instruments and the digitization of the country’s wholesale markets. This was announced by Finance Minister Lucy Rigby, reports Bloomberg.
According to Rigby, the main task of the new specialist will be to combine the efforts of the private sector and public institutions to implement tokenization. In other words, it will work to convert traditional assets such as stocks and bonds into a format based on blockchain technology.
At the same time, the government is creating a new structure — the “Task Force for actions on the dematerialization market” (Dematerialisation Market Action Taskforce). It will deal with the gradual transition from paper certificates to the digital form of financial instruments.
The Ministry of Finance previously presented a strategy for the development of wholesale markets, which provides for the modernization of issuing, trading and settlement systems. The document emphasizes that blockchain and artificial intelligence will play a key role in the updated infrastructure. One of the directions of the strategy will be the issue of digital government bonds called DIGIT. They are planned to be placed in a distributed network, which will ensure transparency and automation of calculations.
The British government has started accepting applications from technology companies that want to join the creation of a system for placing digital government bonds. Currently, both local and international participants are showing interest in the project. The digitalization program of financial markets is part of the government’s broader strategy to strengthen London’s position as a global center for fintech innovation and digital assets, the minister emphasized.
