UK Labour Party Aims to Make Country a Tokenization Hub and Promote Digital Pound

According to CoinDesk, the UK's opposition Labour party has expressed its intention to make the country a hub for securities tokenization and promote the development of a digital pound if it comes to power after the upcoming election. The party's plan for the financial sector is outlined in a 28-page document titled 'Financing Growth,' which also includes making the UK a sustainable finance hub, scaling regional finance centers, and embracing fintech innovation. A general election must be held within the next 12 months, and Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has said it could take place in the second half of this year. The Conservative government has introduced several policies concerning the digital-asset sector, including a markets bill that made crypto a regulated activity and work on a digital pound and tokenization. Labour's plan states that tokenization, defined by UK Finance as 'the digital representation of financial assets using distributed ledger technology,' presents a significant new opportunity for the UK. Investment bank Citi Group estimated that tokenized assets could be worth close to $4 trillion globally by 2030. Labour's plan includes working with regulators to establish a proportionate, outcomes-based regulatory regime to oversee tokenization technology and further developing digital-asset regulatory sandboxes. The party also aims to explore hosting a test issue of tokenized UK government bonds and work with other financial centers to establish interoperable standards for trading tokenized assets across borders. The Labour party also supports the Bank of England's work on a central bank digital currency (CBDC), which has now entered a design phase after the end of a consultation period. The consultation received 50,000 responses, with privacy emerging as a key concern. Labour wants to ensure that issues such as threats to privacy, financial inclusion, and stability are effectively mitigated in the design of a CBDC. The party's plans for tokenization and the digital pound have been welcomed by lobby group CryptoUK, a spokesperson said in a statement.