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One word might be enough to sum up crypto investing in 2025, according to Franklin Templeton’s Roger Bayston.
Diversification.
The asset management titan, alongside competitors, launched bitcoin and ether ETFs last January and July, respectively. The SEC earlier this month approved 19b-4s for crypto index funds (from Franklin and Hashdex) that would hold both assets — and potentially other coins in the future.
“It feels like ETF legal staffs will be busy in the first part of the year,” Bayston, the firm’s digital assets lead, told me. “And I think the story about blockchain and its utility — whether it’s bitcoin as a store of value or these composable chains — is what’s going to be extended in 2025.”
We’ve seen some spot crypto ETF filings focused on solana and XRP. There is optimism a new SEC administration could be friendlier to such plans, though there are no regulated futures markets for those assets, which the agency wanted to see for BTC and ETH.
David Mann, Franklin Templeton’s head of ETF product & capital markets, said his division chats with Roger’s digital assets team to figure out which other assets are exciting (and why). Such convos help guide the product path.
Franklin Templeton’s research team continues to evaluate crypto assets like the firm has done for public equity markets and credit markets for decades.
“We have opinions for sure,” Bayston said.
While the ETFs are essentially “taking crypto and moving it back to TradFi,” Bayston said, he noted part of boosting adoption is going where clients are comfortable holding it.
Outside of those vehicles though, Franklin Templeton offers an OnChain US Government Money Fund (FOBXX). It had ~$430 million in assets as of Nov. 30. That segment appears ripe for growth.
“Tokenized money funds can be both a substitute and also a complementary resource to stablecoin users,” Bayston said.
He noted the massive use case for stablecoins as collateral in derivative transactions, for example. FOBXX offers a yield-bearing alternative.
Franklin Templeton launched the tokenized fund in 2021. It enabled peer-to-peer transfers of its shares in April and made FOBXX available on Coinbase’s layer-2 blockchain in October.
The focus for 2025?
“BENJI has been a US product only,” Bayston told me. “But what you’re going to see right away as we get into the new year…is an expression of BENJI in a global context.”
