For almost 40 years, the 1986 Big Bang transformed London into one of the world’s leading financial centres. Today, the UK has an opportunity to deliver something even more profound: not simply modernising financial markets but rebuilding them for the age of artificial intelligence, tokenisation and programmable money. These projections are further supported by broader international evidence: a Bank of International Settlement report concluded that a 10% increase in the adoption of digital payments can increase GDP by around 1% over two years through greater efficiency, lower transaction costs and improved financial inclusion. With UK GDP now exceeding £3 trillion, a 1% increase would equate to approximately £30billion of additional annual economic output - remarkably consistent with Woolard’s estimates. Barclays Bank has reached a similar conclusion, recently estimating that wider adoption of tokenisation could increase UK GDP by at least £22 billion. Taken together, these independen…
From speed to sovereignty: why the AI economy will settle in the UK
