Tokenized money market funds could be the next ‘killer app’

Franklin Templeton’s Roger Bayston tells Blockworks that stablecoins and market funds ‘complement’ each other

article-image

JHVEPhoto/Shutterstock and Adobe modified by Blockworks

share

This is a segment from the Empire newsletter. To read full editions, subscribe.


Franklin Templeton is introducing intraday yield to Benji users. 

Basically, investors can “own a tokenized security for part of the day, transfer it to another investor, and still earn yield for the period they were a shareholder.”

Franklin Templeton’s Roger Bayston explained: “To actually splice the day, to be able to do that, opens up market opportunities and things like collateral markets, where money may be moving in and around multiple times a day, but as long as you’re in Benji, you can earn the interest for that part of the day, and it begins to find application and other things too.”

And investors can now purchase tokenized securities using stablecoins

Bayston told me this announcement is just one of the many things he and his team are working on. They have been “heads down” to focus on bringing new utilities to Benji. 

Right now, there’s about $7 trillion in money market fund assets in the US, and there’s room to improve them. 

“So crypto-native private funds that have been using stablecoins as collateral for their structured transactions can now begin to use Benji in that construct…that collateral market activity that’s all brand new use cases for money markets; and we see the future where the TradFi markets will begin to use these same feature sets, because these have benefits of moving money really quickly, and that money continuing to earn, right? Continuing to work for you during that whole process,” he explained. 

And, look, I know what you’re thinking: These tokenized funds aren’t the sexiest crypto use case, but there’s clearly a lot of capital to tap there. 

Besides, Bayston believes that if “stablecoins were a killer app for blockchains in general, tokenized money funds are going to be another one because they complement each other.”

He admitted that he’s spending a lot of time looking at how one can get liquidity between the two. 

“Money funds are five business days. Stablecoins are 24/7, and so there is liquidity between those two things, which I think is a future opportunity for market makers and market participants by and large,” he said. 

But he’s also learning that it’s not just about tokenization this year. 

“I think what we’re learning in 2025 is the use of a lot of different assets on blockchain rails can be effective as collateral, and…if you’re acting as collateral, that means you’re borrowing something against it. Well, this is the business of banks, right? So the banks have a lot of interest in building infrastructure or beginning to utilize infrastructure where a number of different assets become easier to deal with in the collateral management process,” he explained. 

So far, banks have shown a lot of interest in figuring out how all of this works, especially in different scenarios like a collateral liquidation.

“They do see this as a way of using new and other types of assets, using these blockchain rails for the truth of record and the ease of transferability of those ownership things as a new ecosystem for collateral, which allows them to do what their basic business is, which is lend,” Bayston said. 

So perhaps a bit in the weeds, but it’s an area of potential adoption we haven’t quite explored yet. 


Get the news in your inbox. Explore Blockworks newsletters:

Tags

Decoding crypto and the markets. Daily, with Byron Gilliam.

Upcoming Events

Old Billingsgate

Mon - Wed, October 13 - 15, 2025

Blockworks’ Digital Asset Summit (DAS) will feature conversations between the builders, allocators, and legislators who will shape the trajectory of the digital asset ecosystem in the US and abroad.

Industry City | Brooklyn, NY

TUES - THURS, JUNE 24 - 26, 2025

Permissionless IV serves as the definitive gathering for crypto’s technical founders, developers, and builders to come together and create the future.If you’re ready to shape the future of crypto, Permissionless IV is where it happens.

Brooklyn, NY

SUN - MON, JUN. 22 - 23, 2025

Blockworks and Cracked Labs are teaming up for the third installment of the Permissionless Hackathon, happening June 22–23, 2025 in Brooklyn, NY. This is a 36-hour IRL builder sprint where developers, designers, and creatives ship real projects solving real problems across […]

recent research

Research Report Templates (10).png

Research

Kamino has evolved into a full-stack asset scaling suite with V2: unlocking new markets, improving capital efficiency, and catering to various risk profiles. We believe it is best positioned to become the credit backbone of Solana as the ecosystem matures. Simply put, KMNO remains our highest-conviction bet in the Solana ecosystem. This report lays out our thesis.

article-image

EigenCloud wants to make crypto-economic guarantees a plug-and-play primitive

article-image

In a new letter, Gemini alleges that the CFTC’s DOE had ulterior motives for 2022 suit

article-image

Sponsored

Neitec’s Debita platform is closing the credit gap by unlocking high-yield private debt in markets that need it most

article-image

From bank porters to stablecoins, the history of money is a story of acceleration

article-image

The Byreal DEX will use both centralized and decentralized liquidity sources to route trades

article-image

Last week’s solana ETF amendments points to “some sort of push from the SEC to get things organized,” a person familiar tells Blockworks.