Franklin Templeton’s Tokenized Treasury Fund Hits HashKey

Returns track the short end of the Treasury curve. RWA.xyz lists the BENJI token yielding about 3.6% over seven and 30 days at a net asset value of $1.00, with just over 1,100 holders. Published figures for the fund's size vary depending on whether a single token or the whole suite is counted.

Haiyang Ru, chief executive of HashKey Exchange BG, said the listing addressed institutional demand for compliant real-world asset yield. Chetan Karkhanis, Franklin Templeton's senior vice president for digital assets client engagement, said the firm intended to expand "beyond tokenized money market funds into other tokenized products over time." He named HashKey's platform across Hong Kong, Singapore, Tokyo, Dubai and Bermuda as the distribution channel.

In May, Franklin Templeton agreed a strategic collaboration with Payward, the parent of Kraken, covering tokenized equities and custody. BENJI is to be integrated into Kraken as collateral and a cash management tool for institutional clients. The firm has also taken the token to BNB Chain after a tie-up with Binance, and struck deals with DigiFT in May and MoonPay Trade in June, the latter letting institutions swap stablecoins directly into the fund.

Franklin Templeton has built out a dedicated crypto arm alongside the distribution push. It launched Franklin Crypto through its acquisition of CoinFund spinoff 250 Digital, which completed in June. The asset manager used BENJI tokens as part of the payment for that deal, describing it as a step toward conducting mergers and acquisitions on-chain.