UK and US Treasuries Hold Hands Across the Atlantic, Promise to Play Nice With Stablecoins 🤝

The US Department of the Treasury and HM Treasury released four joint recommendations on Tuesday through the Transatlantic Taskforce for the Markets of the Future, targeting regulatory alignment on stablecoins and tokenized finance. The two treasury entities said each government intends to "tailor its requirements to seek comparable outcomes for comparable risks and activities, seeking to advance financial stability while avoiding market distortions or disincentivizing cross-border competition." The recommendations call for financial agencies in the US and the Bank of England to identify shared approaches on the regulation of tokenized assets and for authorities to consider a private-sector-led group focused on "testing of cross-border use cases for tokenized assets." The task force was established in September 2025.

On stablecoins specifically, the joint statement described them as "an important vehicle for innovation in digital money" and said regulators should support their use in cross-border payments, settlement, and capital market transactions. The recommendations stated that stablecoins "should be fully backed, on at least a one-to-one basis, by high-quality, liquid assets," language consistent with the Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for US Stablecoins (GENIUS) Act, which was signed into law last year and is awaiting implementing regulations before its effective date in January 2027. The Treasury statement did not explicitly cite the GENIUS Act. Separately, President Trump urged the Senate to pass the CLARITY Act before recess, renewing focus on US crypto regulation, while banking groups have warned that ambiguous stablecoin language could push customers away from deposits and toward stablecoins.

The recommendations followed a report from a UK government-backed industry task force estimating that tokenization could add up to $44 billion to UK annual economic output by 2035, provided the UK becomes a leading jurisdiction for tokenization, that tokenization scales globally, and that UK domestic adoption increases in line with major peers. The report called on the UK to issue tokenized bonds by the first quarter of 2027 and to test financial