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The UK’s home for tokenised equity. Independent news, insight and resources for founders raising capital, investors deploying it, and the firms supporting both — as the regulation, infrastructure and opportunity converge.

CryptoUK Urges FCA and Bank of England to Publish a Tokenisation Delivery Map as It Files Its Call for Input Response

  • Writer: Shawn Jhanji
    Shawn Jhanji
  • Jul 8
  • 4 min read
The story of UK tokenisation this year has been a story of vision documents. On 18 May the Financial Conduct Authority and the Bank of England, with the Prudential Regulation Authority alongside them, published a joint Call for Input titled The Future of Tokenisation, setting out how they think tokenised assets should be issued, traded and settled across UK wholesale markets. The window for responses closed on 3 July. On 6 July the industry body CryptoUK published its own submission, and buried in it is the question every founder and adviser watching this space should care about: not what the regulators want to build, but when, in what order, and who owns each piece.

The story of UK tokenisation this year has been a story of vision documents. On 18 May the Financial Conduct Authority and the Bank of England, with the Prudential Regulation Authority alongside them, published a joint Call for Input titled The Future of Tokenisation, setting out how they think tokenised assets should be issued, traded and settled across UK wholesale markets. The window for responses closed on 3 July. On 6 July the industry body CryptoUK published its own submission, and buried in it is the question every founder and adviser watching this space should care about: not what the regulators want to build, but when, in what order, and who owns each piece.


CryptoUK is the trade association for the UK cryptoasset and digital finance sector, and its response is worth reading precisely because it stops short of applause. The vision, it agrees, is the right one. Tokenisation can cut reconciliation costs, speed up settlement and collateral movement, strengthen ownership records and open up new issuance and post trade models. The practical issue, as CryptoUK frames it, is whether any of that can be translated into the concrete things firms actually plan against: authorisation routes, settlement arrangements, custody expectations and interoperability standards.


A framework built on function, not form


The intellectual spine of the submission is a principle that founders will recognise instinctively. Tokenised arrangements, CryptoUK argues, should not be forced to replicate legacy processes where an equivalent or better regulatory outcome can be demonstrated by a different method. Regulate the function and the risk, in other words, not the plumbing that happens to have delivered it in the past. The response applies that test across ten areas, including authorised fund tokenisation, the Digital Securities Sandbox, settlement modernisation, tokenised money, tokenised collateral, HM Treasury's digital gilt work known as DIGIT, custody, primary issuance and tokenised equities, interoperability, and the harder questions of accountability, operational resilience and financial stability.


Of those ten, primary issuance and tokenised equities is the line that connects most directly to a founder raising capital. It is a signal that the bodies shaping the wholesale rulebook are being pushed to keep the door open to companies issuing their own shares on tokenised rails, not just to funds and gilts moving between large institutions. Whether that door opens quickly, or at all, is exactly the sort of thing a delivery timetable would reveal.


The central ask: an integrated dependency map


The most useful idea in the response is also the least glamorous. CryptoUK asks the FCA, the Bank of England, the PRA and HM Treasury to publish an integrated dependency map covering deliverables, owners, evidence requirements, feedback loops and timelines. Put plainly, a single chart showing what each authority will produce, in what sequence, and what evidence has to exist before the next step can happen.


This matters more than it sounds. A great deal of UK tokenisation infrastructure is already in motion but scattered across bodies and timelines. The Digital Securities Sandbox has 16 firms working on live issuance and settlement, and the regulators have said they want a pathway from the sandbox to permanent authorisation. HM Treasury is running its DIGIT pilot, having awarded the underlying distributed ledger services tender to HSBC in February. The Bank has committed to a live synchronisation service targeted for 2028. Each of these is real, and each has its own owner and clock. What no one has published is the map that shows how they fit together and which one unlocks the next. For a founder or adviser trying to decide whether to build on tokenised foundations now or wait, that map is the difference between planning and guessing.


Why the international framing is the sharp end


CryptoUK is careful to make the competitiveness argument without asking for a race to the bottom. Firms deciding where to commit capital, build counterparty relationships and allocate scarce technical resource will compare the UK against other regimes on the conditions that make deployment possible: the authorisation route, the treatment of settlement assets, custody expectations, collateral eligibility and the path from sandbox evidence to permanent permissions. The UK does not need lower standards to win that comparison, the response argues. It needs standards clear enough to plan against and usable enough that responsible activity stays inside supervised markets rather than drifting offshore.


That is the open question the daily news cannot yet answer. The regulators have promised a feedback statement in the summer. The value of CryptoUK's intervention is that it reframes what a good feedback statement would contain. Not more vision, but a schedule.


Key takeaways


  • CryptoUK filed its response to the FCA and Bank of England Call for Input on the future of tokenisation on 6 July, arguing for rules based on function, risk and evidence rather than replicating legacy processes.

  • The response spans ten areas, including primary issuance and tokenised equities, the line most relevant to founders raising capital.

  • Its central ask is an integrated dependency map from the FCA, Bank of England, PRA and HM Treasury, showing deliverables, owners, evidence requirements and timelines.

  • Live UK building blocks already exist but sit in separate timelines: 16 firms in the Digital Securities Sandbox, the DIGIT digital gilt pilot with HSBC, and a Bank synchronisation service targeted for 2028.

  • A feedback statement is expected in the summer. The open question is whether it delivers a schedule founders can plan against, not just another statement of intent.


This piece is general information and an open editorial question, not tax, legal or investment advice.


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