Franklin Templeton Digital Assets adds Aptos to its list of chains

Fraklin Templeton Digital Assets expanded its services to the Aptos L1 chain. The investment company offers a portfolio of conservative T-bills and money market assets, minted as native tokens on multiple blockchains. 

Aptos is now offering native tokenized assets, issued by the Franklin Templeton Digital Assets fund. The organization specializes in real-world assets (RWA), mostly based on US T-bills. More than 95.5% of the fund’s reserves are locked in those conservative assets. Outside of crypto, Franklin Templeton manages $1.6T in traditional financial instruments and assets.

Aptos is a fast proof-of-stake chain with validator nodes. The chain gained support from the largest investment funds, raising $200M in a strategic round in 2022. Franklin Templeton Investments was also part of the fundraising, participating in a Series A round in 2022. The chain has the backing of Andreessen Horowitz, Coinbase Ventures, as well as investment fund Jump Crypto, among other Tier 1 VC funds.

Following the news of the launch, the APT native token market price remained relatively unchanged. APT traded at $7.67 after a volatile week, but still close to its higher range for the past month.

In total, Aptos drew in $350M to become a high-profile L1 chain. The chain carries $1.02B in value locked, of which $212M in stablecoins, after more active DeFi inflows in the past few months. Aptos is not EVM-compatible, but has received around $4.4M inflows from Ethereum through bridging, mostly in the form of wrapped ETH. Aptos is more widely used for liquid staking and lending, with relatively smaller DEX trading volumes. 

Aptos is an innovative L1 chain with its own smart contract frameworks using the Move programming language. The project was developed by a former Facebook/Meta team with previous experience in launching digital assets. 

Franklin Templeton may be conservative in picking its underlying assets, but has aimed at innovation when it comes to selecting chains. The fund has worked as a node operator on several networks, including Ethereum via L2 and Solana. 

The native BENJI token is also active on less widely used chains like  Provenance, Cardano, Stellar, and Polkadot. The fund is just now spreading to more chains, adding Arbitrum in August. Franklin Templeton Digital Assets has been active in the crypto space since the bull market of 2018, hence the launch of tokens on relatively older chains. 

The direct RWA investments are also available through a mobile app, aiming at potential retail buyers. Investing in the low-risk bonds happens through the BENJI token, which corresponds to shares in the Franklin On-Chain US Government Money Fund. 

Franklin Templeton offers RWA outside the current DeFi ecosystem

The fund locks in a total of $427.95M, of which more than 85% is in liquid assets. The fund has been active since 2021, allowing onboarding through the proprietary app and the BENJI token. 

BENJI is fully transferable on-chain but has not been listed for secondary market trading. The token resembles BUIDL by Blackrock, but the asset has not spread through the decentralized ecosystem. BUIDL, on the other hand, is used as collateral for launching new stablecoins on smaller DeFi and lending protocols.

BENJI is more targeted to retail buyers, though Franklin Templeton also has an institutional version of its app. BENJI and the fund’s shares have a nominal value of $1, but the exact price is determined at the moment when the shares are redeemed. 

Franklin Templeton was among the first to launch a tokenized fund, at a time when the latest DeFi infrastructure was not completed. For that reason, BENJI remains a niche token, limited to the fund’s proprietary app and record-keeping ecosystem. 

The Franklin Templeton fund achieved a conservative 2.97% annualized return since 2021, citing unusual bear market conditions in 2022. 

Franklin Templeton BTC ETF see renewed inflows

The Franklin Templeton Bitcoin ETF (EXBC) saw renewed inflows in the past week. Another 86.97 BTC flowed into the fund from Coinbase Custody. 

Franklin Templeton carries a crypto portfolio of more than $463M, of which 7,104 BTC and 11.78 ETH. Both the BTC and ETH ETF by Franklin Templeton will offer zero fees until January 1, 2025. 

Franklin Templeton has also filed an S-1 form to offer an ETF based on a crypto index. The fund will first offer its shares based on a weighted basket of only BTC and ETF, without exposure to riskier tokens. 

Cryptopolitan reporting by Hristina Vasileva