Franklin Templeton Closes 250 Digital Deal, Launches Franklin Crypto

Franklin Crypto Absorbs CoinFund Strategies

250 Digital emerged from CoinFund’s liquid investment business and was led by Perkins and Ginns, both former CoinFund managing partners. Franklin Templeton is acquiring the team and every liquid cryptocurrency strategy previously operated by CoinFund, while CoinFund’s venture business remains separate.

Franklin Crypto will sit alongside Franklin Templeton’s existing digital asset capabilities rather than replace them. The firm says its broader digital asset group conducts fundamental token research, active portfolio construction and institutional risk oversight.

That foundation is already substantial. Franklin Templeton’s digital assets operation says it has more than 50 people and has worked in the sector since 2018, including building blockchain systems and operating network validators.

The business managed about $1.8 billion globally as of December 31, 2025, according to the original acquisition announcement. The parent company later reported $1.78 trillion in total assets at May 31, up from $1.75 trillion one month earlier after positive markets and $4 billion of long-term net inflows.

Those figures show the distribution opportunity and the current scale gap. Digital assets represented only a small fraction of Franklin Templeton’s total platform before the acquisition, leaving room for growth if pensions, wealth managers and sovereign institutions adopt active crypto mandates.

The company did not identify the inherited strategies, disclose their returns or state whether they are open to new capital. Prospective investors will need fee schedules, liquidity terms, custody arrangements, benchmark information and track records before the new division can be evaluated against crypto-native funds.

BENJI Adds an Onchain Deal Layer

Franklin Templeton’s original agreement said BENJI tokens would be incorporated as payment consideration, creating an unusual link between the acquisition and the firm’s tokenization business. BENJI represents shares in the Franklin OnChain U.S. Government Money Fund rather than a freely floating cryptocurrency.

The fund invests at least 99.5% of its assets in government securities, cash and fully collateralized repurchase agreements. Each tokenized share is designed to maintain the economic characteristics of the regulated money-market fund while blockchain infrastructure records ownership and transactions.

The final closing release did not quantify the BENJI payment or disclose the completed mix of cash, tokens or other consideration. The supported claim is therefore that BENJI formed part of the announced payment structure, not that the entire purchase settled onchain.

That distinction matters as tokenized funds move beyond demonstrations. RWA.xyz’s Franklin Templeton platform data showed about $2.51 billion in distributed asset value across four tracked products, including institutional and retail money-market structures.

Using a tokenized registered security in corporate settlement gives Franklin Templeton a practical test of its own infrastructure. It also places the deal beside the firm’s wider effort to make tokenized cash products usable as collateral and settlement assets, rather than leaving them as standalone investment wrappers.

Franklin’s new active unit extends that stack. The firm can now present tokenized cash, passive crypto exposure and discretionary crypto management as separate institutional products under one parent, while its proposed Bitcoin DRIP ETFs target another route into portfolio allocation.

Institutional Demand Faces a Bear-Market Test

The timing is demanding. Bitcoin has fallen roughly 20% since May 22, and the Crypto Fear and Greed Index remained at 23, or Extreme Fear, on June 23. Franklin Crypto is beginning operations when performance, drawdown control and client retention will matter more than rising market prices.

Active management can give institutions tools that passive funds do not, including token selection, cash allocation, hedging and position sizing. It also introduces manager risk, higher fees and strategy complexity, and Franklin Templeton has not yet published enough product detail to judge how those tradeoffs will be handled.

The launch fits a broader race among large asset managers to control more of the digital asset value chain. JPMorgan has already placed a tokenized money-market fund on Ethereum, while BlackRock has connected its BUIDL tokenized Treasury fund to onchain UniswapX liquidity.

Franklin Templeton’s differentiation is the combination of active crypto strategies and proprietary tokenized fund infrastructure. The acquisition gives it experienced managers and existing portfolios, but distribution scale alone does not establish investor demand or investment performance.

The next evidence will come from Franklin Crypto’s first product disclosures, assets under management, client mandates and regulatory filings. Terms of the acquisition, the BENJI settlement amount and the inherited strategies’ performance remained undisclosed at publication.