Franklin Templeton CEO says rival tokenized funds miss the point of blockchain

Franklin Templeton CEO Jenny Johnson took a swing at the competition at TOKEN2049 Singapore. Her argument: many rival tokenized funds are digital copies of traditional products that don’t capture what blockchain actually offers.

Native versus copy

The conference ran October 7-8, 2026. Johnson used it to draw a line between Franklin Templeton’s tokenized offerings and what she characterized as “digital twin” funds elsewhere in the market.

Franklin Templeton’s pitch is that its BENJI product works the other way around. The fund’s records are natively based on public blockchains, so the chain is the source of truth rather than a reflection of one.

Johnson pointed to two practical benefits of that design. The first is real-time yield calculation, with BENJI supporting per-second yield accrual.

The second benefit is cost. Johnson highlighted a transaction cost of $1.13 for BENJI, compared with approximately $150 per transaction under traditional methods.

How BENJI got here

BENJI is not a new experiment. Franklin Templeton launched it in 2021 as the first US-registered mutual fund to use a public blockchain for its ownership records.

Since then, the product has expanded across multiple chains. It has also found a role in institutional collateral arrangements, with partnerships now allowing BENJI shares to serve as off-exchange collateral on crypto platforms including Bybit and Binance.

The total value of Franklin Templeton’s tokenized money funds, including BENJI, has reached an estimated $2.5 billion. BENJI’s own figures have ranged from the hundreds of millions to over $800 million during 2026.

Putting tokens where its mouth is

Franklin Templeton has also been using BENJI in its own corporate dealings. In April 2026, the firm acquired 250 Digital, a crypto investment team, from CoinFund, with part of the payment made in BENJI tokens.

What this means for the tokenization race

Johnson’s critique effectively tries to split the tokenized fund field into two camps: products built natively on public chains and products that wrap existing systems in a token.

The cost comparison is the most concrete part of her argument. A transaction cost of $1.13 against roughly $150 is easy to understand, and it gives procurement teams a number to put in a spreadsheet.

Size is another consideration. An estimated $2.5 billion across tokenized money funds is meaningful for this young market, but it remains a small slice of a firm managing approximately $1.8 trillion.