06 October 2025
Ian Simpson | 2 min read
With nearly half a billion in assets, Franklin Templeton’s pioneering tokenized money market fund – popularly known as BENJI – is clearly a success. But…how did it come about?
What does the $1.6 trillion asset manager think tokenized assets will do for capital markets? And what still needs to happen for blockchain rails to go “big time” in the global world of finance?
Franklin Templeton’s Head of Digital Assets Roger Bayston sat down with Ian Simpson to discuss all this and more on RULEMATCH Spot On.
Episode show notes:
1:46 – Intro
2:46 – The motivation behind FOBXX / BENJI
5:33 – Why a tokenized money market fund?
6:45 – Who is buying BENJI?
8:00 – Interest from crypto-native hedge funds
9:40 – Why tokenize when the market isn’t ready?
11:23 – Upgrading the velocity of money moving in funds
13:30 – Why the BENJI app?
15:17 – How does BENJI trading work?
18:00 – The “white-label” ecosystem of Franklin Templeton
20:50 – Who should get into tokenization as well?
21:54 – An “ideal” relationship between Franklin Templeton and Morgan Stanley
23:33 – The massive adoption of Web 3.0 wallets
24:38 – The innovation of intraday yield
25:30 – Adoption among market makers
26:49 – The real advantages of going fully “on-chain”
28:46 – The hot topic of stablecoins
29:56 – The “cold hard geopolitical fact” of US-backed stablecoins
31:22 – The holy grail of yield with stablecoins
32:19 – J.P. Morgan and Web 3.0 wallet-based organizations
34:48 – Franklin Templeton’s conviction about Web 3.0
35:02 – Coming to terms with the “financialization” of crypto
37:33 – The amazing thing about financial advisors in the US
38:07 – Financial institutions’ attitude towards tech
40:12 – What comes next for tokenization?
41:14 – CALPERS and tokenized investments
44:29 – Shifting what “is possible” for investments
45:29 – The considerations for choosing a blockchain to use
48:08 – Working with “digital nation states”
49:55 – What could come next?
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