Franklin Templeton’s Head of Digital Assets, Roger Bayston, recently highlighted how legacy blockchain projects like Ripple and $XRP are evolving.
He stated that $XRP is no longer just surviving market cycles but is actively channeling accumulated capital into building real-world businesses. Bayston shared this on the Thinking Crypto podcast with Tony Edward.
Key Points
- Ripple is shifting $XRP from speculation to real-world business use, redeploying years of accumulated capital into infrastructure.
- Franklin Templeton sees $XRP’s value in the scale of financial systems around it.
- Institutions are embracing multi-chain strategies, with firms like Franklin Templeton avoiding closed ecosystems for broader network access.
- Tokenization is expanding beyond crypto, with $XRP Ledger could benefit as real-world assets move on-chain.
Ripple’s Capital Strategy
According to Bayston, some of the earliest blockchain networks have amassed significant capital over time. Meanwhile, the next phase involves putting those resources to work.
He highlighted Ripple as a key example, noting that the company has “fantastic plans” to redeploy capital generated through $XRP into building substantial businesses.
This aligns with Ripple’s recent aggressive expansion strategy, which has seen $3 billion deployed into infrastructure, including custody, liquidity, treasury management, and institutional brokerage services. The goal is to strengthen the $XRP ecosystem and position it at the center of institutional finance.
Bayston’s comments reinforce the idea that $XRP’s long-term value proposition may lie in the scale of infrastructure being built around it.
Multi-Chain Future, Not Walled Gardens
Bayston also made it clear that Franklin Templeton is not pursuing its own proprietary blockchain, unlike firms such as Coinbase and Robinhood.
Instead, the asset manager is betting on a multi-chain future, describing blockchains as “digital nation-states” that will evolve at different speeds.
Rather than creating a closed system, the firm plans to work across multiple networks and benefit as they develop.
In this setup, Ripple is one of the networks with the resources and strategy to remain relevant as the industry matures.
Institutional Mindset Is Changing
Furthermore, Bayston said institutional investors are still adapting to how crypto is reshaping finance. In the past, custody, trading, and infrastructure were handled by separate firms. Now, platforms are combining these services into a single system, changing how institutions participate.
This shift is happening on major platforms like Binance, Kraken, and OKX, which together serve hundreds of millions of wallets.
For Franklin Templeton, these platforms act as a new distribution channel. Specifically, Bayston calls it the “wallet ecosystem,” where financial products can be delivered directly to users on-chain.
Tokenization Expands Beyond Crypto
Beyond $XRP and payments, Bayston emphasized that tokenization is expanding across asset classes.
Franklin Templeton, which manages about $1.6 trillion, is already working with tokenized money market funds and plans to expand into real estate, commodities, and securities.
He stressed that these assets do not change; they simply move into a digital format and run on blockchain. This could benefit networks like the $XRP Ledger, as more real-world assets move on-chain and require liquidity and settlement.
Ultimately, Bayston believes the strongest blockchain networks, those with capital, strategy, and real-world use, will continue evolving.
For Ripple, this means using $XRP’s existing capital base to build large-scale financial infrastructure, which is already playing out.
