Overview
- Franklin Templeton, which closed its purchase of 250 Digital on June 22, has created Franklin Crypto to offer actively managed cryptocurrency strategies to institutional clients.
- Christopher Perkins will lead the unit and Seth Ginns will serve as chief investment officer after the entire 250 Digital investment team was absorbed into Franklin Crypto.
- Part of the acquisition was paid with BENJI tokens, the on-chain representation of Franklin Templeton’s Franklin OnChain U.S. Government Money Fund, marking one of the first major M&A uses of tokenized fund shares.
- Franklin Templeton said it will commit its own capital to the liquid crypto strategies now housed in the new division and has not disclosed the full financial terms of the deal.
- The move builds on the firm’s tokenization push and partnerships with Binance, Ondo and MoonPay and follows a rise in its tokenized assets from about $768 million to over $2.5 billion in the past year, widening institutional access to on-chain real-world assets.