Jenny Johnson, CEO of Franklin Templeton, has a straightforward explanation for why major financial institutions have been slow to adopt public blockchain technology: The technology is destroying their fee-based revenue streams.
Speaking at the Proof of Talk summit in Paris, Johnson – who oversees $1.74 trillion in assets at Franklin Templeton – said: He told the panel audience The resistance from traditional financial players is not about skepticism about the technology.
It’s about protecting the business model. Banks and brokers that collect transaction fees at every step of the settlement process will lose that income the moment a smart contract can handle the same function for a fraction of the cost.
Johnson pointed to Franklin Templeton’s token money market fund, Benji, as concrete evidence of the cost difference. Conducting 50,000 transactions through the company’s legacy system costs $1.30 per transaction. The same volume processed on the Stellar blockchain reached $1.13 per transaction – a significant decline at the institutional level.
This announcement was made in the name of Franklin Templeton It has been detected A new partnership with MoonPay, designed to allow institutional investors to move between stablecoins and the company’s token fund through an on-chain workflow. Franklin Templeton’s push into digital assets is one of the most aggressive moves by a legacy asset manager in the industry’s history. The California-based company, which manages roughly $1.74 trillion in assets, began building its dedicated digital assets team in 2018 — years before tokenization became a major focus among institutional players.
Bitcoin and Cryptocurrency Payments by Franklin Templeton
Benji launched in 2021 as the first US-registered mutual fund to use public blockchain technology as a formal recording system to process transactions and record stock ownership. The fund invests predominantly in US Treasuries and uses blockchain technology strictly for operational efficiency rather than exposure to cryptocurrencies.
On the Bitcoin front, Franklin Templeton Fired Franklin Bitcoin ETF (ticker: EZBC), a passive product that holds only bitcoin and cash, is designed for investors seeking direct price exposure without custodial management.
The company also offers a separately managed Bitcoin/Ethereum dynamic account product for investors wanting to actively allocate between the two largest digital assets.
In April 2026, Franklin Templeton Announce It plans to acquire 250 Digital, a subsidiary of cryptocurrency investment firm CoinFund, and form a new division called Franklin Crypto to pursue active cryptocurrency investment strategies at the institutional level.
The deal itself broke new ground – BENJI tokens were used as part of the acquisition push, making it one of the first regulated on-chain M&A transactions. The company’s digital assets division manages approximately $1.8 billion in assets.
