Franklin Templeton Expands Its Blockchain Fund to Avalanche

Leading asset manager Franklin Templeton's Nasdaq-listed OnChain U.S. Government Money Fund (FOBXX) is now available on Avalanche.

The Wall Street giant said Thursday that institutional investors can allocate to the fund through digital wallets on its Benji Investments platform. They can also keep their wallets on the Avalanche network—upon request and subject to eligibility.

Avalanche is the blockchain behind the 14th biggest cryptocurrency by market cap, AVAX. Its network is used to build decentralized apps such as decentralized finance (DeFi) products. It aims to compete with Ethereum.

"Bringing the Benji platform to the Avalanche network further expands access to our first-of-its-kind tokenized money market fund," 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.

Just last week, Franklin Templeton announced FOBXX's compatibility on Arbitrum network, an Ethereum scaling solution.

This is the latest move by the traditional finance titan into the world of crypto.

Franklin Templeton is one of many high-profile Wall Street giants that launched a spot Bitcoin ETF and later an Ethereum ETF this year. Both have been hugely successful.

But the firm first dipped its toes in the blockchain space back in 2018 when it started digitizing shares for a money market fund on the Stellar blockchain. Then, in 2021, it announced a digital asset venture fund.

Edited by Ryan Ozawa.