If you've been reading this Briefing for a while, you'll know Franklin Templeton keeps showing up: among the first to tokenize securities, and among the first ETF issuers in the U.S.
Soon, they'll also be the first large traditional asset manager with an in-house liquid token fund.
The firm announced plans to acquire 250 Digital, a spin-off of crypto venture fund CoinFund, to launch Franklin Crypto. Once closed, expected by the end of this quarter, the deal gives Franklin the capabilities to run more active crypto strategies.
"This big selloff that we had in the crypto markets is creating a very unique opportunity that really made us all decide that this is the right time to pull the trigger," Sandy Kaul, Franklin's Head of Innovation, told The Wall Street Journal.
For crypto markets, and liquid tokens beyond BTC and ETH in particular, it sends a strong signal. The segment has recently been defined by underperformance versus equities, fund closures, and weak inflows. Franklin entering at this point suggests that liquid tokens are starting to be treated less as a trading playground and more as a maturing, ownable investment vertical.
One more detail worth flagging: Franklin is considering using BENJI tokens, representing its tokenized money market fund, as part of the payment. If that goes through, it would make this at least partially an onchain M&A transaction, adding yet another first to Franklin's growing list.
In today’s Briefing:
BNP Paribas offers crypto ETPs
EthCC special: Institutions take center stage in Cannes
HIGH SIGNAL NEWS
BNP Paribas now offers crypto ETPs. Since Monday, French clients of Europe’s largest bank can invest, through their brokerage accounts, in six ETNs tracking the price of Bitcoin and Ether. 🇫🇷
Mitsubishi adopts JPMorgan Chase’s 24/7 blockchain payments solution. It is the first Japanese company to adopt it, joining firms such as Siemens and B2C2, which have also implemented Kinexys’ solution, the bank’s blockchain subsidiary. It will enable the company to move money between Singapore, London, and New York without relying on traditional banking hours. 🌐
TOP STORY
EthCC: Institutions Take Center Stage at Kaiko’s The Agora Event in Cannes
The place to be: On Tuesday, blockchain data provider Kaiko hosted the first edition of “The Agora” at the Marriott Hotel in Cannes, on the sidelines of EthCC, the largest European gathering of the Ethereum ecosystem. The event featured more than 50 speakers from across DeFi and TradFi, including executives from Euroclear, Société Générale, Standard Chartered, DTCC, Fidelity, Amundi, and BPCE Group.
Strong institutional presence: What set Agora apart was the composition of the audience. European banks, large asset managers, and nearly all of the continent’s critical financial market infrastructures sat alongside digital asset companies and DeFi builders. The mood was energetic and forward-looking: the sense in the room was that the industry is moving past experimentation toward the scaling phase.
Money market funds as the litmus test: That conviction was most tangible in the day’s dominant topic: tokenized money market funds. Over the past two years, onchain issuance has grown from around $100 million to more than $9 billion, with players such as Franklin Templeton, WisdomTree, Fidelity, and BlackRock already among the issuers. The use cases are well understood: more efficient collateral, better treasury management, 24/7 transferability. Yet adoption remains a fraction of the nearly $8 trillion market.
Assets without markets: Fidelity’s Cynthia Lo Bessette, Head of Digital Asset Management, offered the clearest diagnosis. The industry spent years proving that traditional assets can live onchain. What it did not build was the market around them: the platforms, the liquidity, the buy-side access that allow institutions to actually use these products.
“Three, five years ago there really were quite a few POCs around how to demonstrate that you can credibly and safely represent a traditional asset onchain. But there was no market. There was no buy-side infrastructure and really there was no liquidity to facilitate the market for tokenized securities to be able to trade.”
Early steps: Jean-Jacques Barbéris, Deputy CEO of Amundi, confirmed the picture. Europe’s largest asset manager has been running experiments, testing different setups, and learning progressively. That approach is reflected in its first product: rather than launching a new fund, Amundi replicated an existing €5 billion money market fund on Ethereum in late 2025. Barbéris was clear that the industry will eventually have to move beyond this phase.
“You need to have the underlyings on the blockchain. Without that, you’re just replicating onchain what is existing in the existing world.”
The cash question: As the day progressed, a related issue emerged: even where tokenized assets exist, there is still no clear consensus on what should be used for settlement. One key question is the role that stablecoins, currently the most operational form of onchain cash, will play alongside future tokenized deposits and wholesale CBDCs. With frameworks like the GENIUS Act in the U.S. and MiCA in Europe, market infrastructures are becoming increasingly comfortable with stablecoin-based settlement. Pierre Davoust, Head of Euronext Securities, argued that the debate is often framed too narrowly.
“Some try to pit CBDCs against stablecoins. In reality, both serve different use cases. We need to be prepared for a setup where central bank money is used for part of the settlement activity, alongside stablecoins and tokenized deposits.”
Different solutions for different purposes: Andrew O’Neill, Managing Director and Digital Assets Analytical Lead at S&P Global, reinforced this point. Different forms of digital cash serve different purposes, and the institutions positioning themselves now are not choosing between them but preparing to offer all of them.
“We don’t see it as a battle between stablecoins and tokenized deposits and central bank money. It’s horses for courses. Wholesale CBDC makes sense between banks and their central bank. Tokenized deposits fit within a single bank’s ecosystem. But anything aspiring to be open loop, anything structured as a fund or securitization, is most likely to work on the basis of stablecoins.”
For banks, O’Neill argued, the stablecoin buildout is less about payments revenue and more about strategic positioning: being able to serve clients in a tokenized world.
“If you think about why banks are looking to issue stablecoins now, it’s not because they’re looking to profit on reserves. It’s a franchise play: to the extent that tokenization takes off, they need to be able to offer those products to clients.”
Onchain financial data: Beyond funds and settlement, a quieter but significant theme emerged in the afternoon: putting financial data itself onchain. As tokenized products scale, they need the same data traditional markets rely on: indices, benchmarks, credit ratings. Today, that data is distributed through separate licensing agreements, with reporting that is often delayed and sometimes disputed. Onchain, the data, the license, and the usage tracking can live in the same token.
Index data: Kaiko and S&P Dow Jones Indices announced that the iBoxx U.S. Treasuries Index has been tokenized on the Canton Network, giving institutional product issuers onchain access to the benchmark with embedded licensing and compliance features; they described it as the first major financial benchmark distributed this way.
“We are interested in real life use cases. We’re getting pulled onchain by partners who have an application for those tokenized indices. For an IP issuer like ourselves, onchain means better auditability, visibility into how the IP is being used, and instantaneous reporting,” said Cameron Drinkwater, Chief Product and Operations Officer at S&P DJI.
A pattern emerging: S&P is not alone. Bloomberg is distributing its licensed pricing and reference data onchain for tokenized treasury and repo workflows. Two weeks earlier, Moody’s became the first credit rating agency to deliver credit insights onchain through its Token Integration Engine. According to our information, Ethereum and Solana are expected to follow Canton as target networks.
After hours: As the main program wrapped up, speakers and attendees moved to the rooftop terrace overlooking the Mediterranean for drinks and aperitivo. The contrast with some of the more crypto-native events around EthCC week was hard to miss: while many conversations reflected the weight of a bear market, the mood upstairs suggested that the institutional adoption curve is now running on its own clock.
Ambre Soubiran is CEO of Kaiko, a global provider of digital asset market data, indices, and pricing for institutional investors, financial institutions, and regulators. The company organized the first edition of The Agora to connect traditional financial institutions with onchain native players.
As Europe’s flagship blockchain event, ETHcc is an ideal place to connect financial institutions with the most relevant crypto-native players.
As a data provider sitting at the intersection of both worlds, we are seeing a clear shift: traditional financial institutions and onchain-native players can no longer evolve in parallel, they now need each other. On one side, financial institutions are moving into production and increasingly require onchain-native expertise. On the other, a maturing ecosystem needs to scale, with clear leaders beginning to emerge.
This is precisely why we co-built The Agora, a complementary forum dedicated to fostering dialogue between traditional finance and onchain markets, and to building bridges between developers, entrepreneurs, researchers, and financial institutions. Moving forward will require the combined expertise of both worlds.
Bank Frick: Assistant to Head of Blockchain Banking Solutions, Liechtenstein 🇱🇮
Banking Circle: Digital Assets AML Lead, London 🇬🇧
Barclays: Enterprise Architect - Cash Management & Digital Assets, London 🇬🇧
Danske Bank: Product Owner – Digital Assets, Copenhagen 🇩🇰
Deutsche Bank: Solution Architect Lead - Digital Asset Custody, Berlin 🇩🇪
Deutsche Börse Group: Product Manager - Digital Assets / Collateral, Luxembourg 🇱🇺
State Street: Digital Assets Product Management Lead, Luxembourg 🇱🇺
Tether: Investment Manager, Switzerland 🇨🇭
Banking in the tokenized economy (IBM) — An outlook on how tokenization is forcing banks to reinvent their role, with success hinging on their ability to capture new value across custody, infrastructure, and ecosystem participation.
Bank Participation in Public Blockchains (Ubyx) — A note arguing that banks must actively participate in public blockchains or risk disintermediation, positioning them as the bridge bringing compliance, custody, and trust to the onchain economy through wallets, token issuance, and regulated infrastructure.
Tokenization Outlook 2026 (Centrifuge) — A survey-based report arguing that tokenization has shifted from issuance to distribution, with adoption driven by utility and scaling dependent on liquidity, integration, and regulatory clarity rather than technology alone.
What do you think of today's briefing?
Disclaimer: The information provided in the Institutional Briefing by Blockstories does not constitute investment advice. Accordingly, we assume no liability for any investment decisions made based on the content presented herein.