Franklin Templeton acquires crypto fund spin-off and launches Franklin Crypto

Franklin Templeton, the $1.7T traditional mutual fund and retail distribution focused asset manager, is acquiring a spin-off from CoinFund to launch Franklin Crypto.

Source: WSJ

➡️ Details

The acquisition target, 250 Digital, is a spinoff from CoinFund and led by the former CoinFund executives Christopher Perkins and Seth Ginns. The new crypto arm, to be named Franklin Crypto following the close of the deal, will offer strategies that appeal to pensions, sovereign-wealth funds and other institutional investors.

➡️ Why it matters

Franklin Templeton has been one of the most crypto-forward and retail-focused asset managers in the industry. It is betting heavily in a wallet-enabled and blockchain-native future where its products are purchased by billions of people via wallets.

It has invested in digital asset, including: 

- Building digital transfer agent capabilities to support onchain-native tokenized funds

- Investing in owning blockchain infrastructure and assembling a 50+ people digital asset team

- Launching the first tokenized money market fund BENJI on Stellar

This latest move represents the most serious attempt at capturing the wallets of an investor group that traditionally have not cared for buying things because they are digital. 

It would be interesting to see what type of structured products they will create to satisfy the yield requirement of sophisticated investors. And that, instead of the acquisition itself, will be the measuring stick for success.

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