Franklin Templeton Expands Blockchain Fund to Aptos

Wall Street titan Franklin Templeton has put its Nasdaq-listed On-Chain U.S. Government Money Fund (FOBXX) on a new blockchain: Aptos.

The asset manager said Wednesday that the move was a “massive step in the right direction” to “innovate in the name of a truly decentralized and accessible financial future.”

Aptos is the blockchain behind APT, the 30th-biggest digital coin by market cap. Its network was founded by part of the team behind Meta’s failed Diem project. Developers can use the blockchain to build decentralized apps (dapps), launch tokens, and more.

“We chose the Aptos network given its unique characteristics, which meet our rigorous suitability standards for the Benji platform,” Franklin Templeton’s head of digital assets, Roger Bayston, said.

FOBXX is a digitized fund that lets customers put cash into U.S. government securities, cash, and repurchase agreements.

Investors can buy shares of FOBXX and hold them in digital wallets via Franklin Templeton’s Benji Investments mobile app.

Franklin Templeton has put the fund on a number of blockchains, including Avalanche, Arbitrum, Stellar, and Polygon. Avalanche was the most recent addition before Aptos, coming in late August.

The firm said that FOBXX is the first and only U.S.-registered fund to use a public blockchain as the system of record to process transactions and record share ownership.

Franklin Templeton has been dipping its toes in the crypto world since 2019, when it started digitizing shares for a money market fund on the Stellar blockchain. It also announced a digital asset venture fund two years ago.

Edited by Andrew Hayward