Franklin Templeton CEO Critiques Competitors at TOKEN2049 Singapore

At the TOKEN2049 conference held in Singapore on October 7-8, 2026, Franklin Templeton CEO Jenny Johnson criticized rival tokenized funds, asserting that many are merely digital copies of traditional financial products and fail to leverage the true efficiencies offered by blockchain technology. Johnson emphasized that Franklin Templeton's tokenized offerings, particularly the BENJI product, are fundamentally different as they are natively built on public blockchains, making the blockchain the source of truth rather than a mere reflection of existing systems.

Johnson highlighted two key advantages of the BENJI fund: real-time yield calculation and significantly reduced transaction costs. The BENJI fund allows for per-second yield accrual, and its transaction cost is approximately $1.13, a stark contrast to the roughly $150 per transaction typical of traditional methods. This cost efficiency, she argued, is a compelling reason for institutional investors to consider the benefits of blockchain-based funds.

Launched in 2021, BENJI was the first U.S.-registered mutual fund to utilize a public blockchain for ownership records. Since its inception, the fund has expanded across multiple blockchain networks and has been integrated into institutional collateral arrangements, allowing BENJI shares to be used as off-exchange collateral on major crypto platforms such as Bybit and Binance. The total value of Franklin Templeton's tokenized money funds, including BENJI, has reached an estimated $2.5 billion, although this represents a small portion of the firm's overall assets under management, which total approximately $1.8 trillion.

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Source: KLEA News