Fund Giant Joins Forces with Crypto Exchange in Bold Bid to ’Reimagine’ Finance

Wall Street meets blockchain in a partnership that's either revolutionary or just another buzzword-laden power grab.

The Unlikely Alliance

A traditional fund giant and major crypto exchange just shook hands on a collaboration that promises to reshape financial infrastructure. They're building bridges between legacy systems and decentralized networks—claiming it'll give investors the best of both worlds.

Cutting Out Middlemen

Their platform slashes settlement times from days to seconds. It bypasses traditional custodians and custodial fees—direct access, lower costs, instant execution. Because who needs paperwork when you've got smart contracts?

The Cynic's Take

Another 'reimagining' from finance titans who've spent decades perfecting the old system they now want to dismantle. How convenient.

This isn't just incremental change—it's a full-scale assault on financial orthodoxy. Watch traditional institutions scramble to keep up.

As Franklin Templeton’s Sandy Kaul said in a Wednesday statement: “We see blockchain not as a threat to legacy systems, but as an opportunity to reimagine them.” 

And so we’ve seen the company migrate more into the crypto segment in recent years. It was one of the dozen or so issuers that lined up to launch a bitcoin ETF in January 2024. But well before that — in 2021 — Franklin launched a money market fund that used the stellar blockchain to record transactions. A share of the fund is represented by one BENJI token, which the firm made accessible in digital wallets through an app. 

I recall Franklin exec Roger Bayston telling me in mid-2023 how BENJI can essentially act as a stablecoin while also generating income. That conversion was about a year before BlackRock launched a similar yield fund (aka BUIDL), which spurred tokenized treasury momentum. 

BUIDL quickly surpassed Franklin’s product in assets under management, with the totals now standing at ~$2.2 billion and ~$740 million, respectively.  

Speaking of BlackRock, today’s news kind of reminded me of the world’s largest asset manager teaming up with Coinbase in 2022. 

The bottom line is this trend of TradFi and DeFi worlds coming together is in no way slowing. That means I’ll have to be cautious about not reusing headlines — whether one from earlier this week or months back.

Franklin Templeton CEO Jenny Johnson has said she thinks we’ll see more financial market infrastructure transformation in the next five years than we’ve seen in the last 50. 

Translation: It’s a rad time to be a crypto/finance journalist and reader.

• The Breakdown: Decoding crypto and the markets. Daily.
• 0xResearch: Alpha in your inbox. Think like an analyst.
• Empire: Crypto news and analysis to start your day.
• Forward Guidance: The intersection of crypto, macro and policy.
• The Drop: Apps, games, memes and more.
• Lightspeed: All things Solana.
• Supply Shock: Bitcoin, bitcoin, bitcoin.