Franklin Templeton Acquires ‘250 Digital,’ Moves Into Active Crypto Asset Management [Crypto Briefing]

According to Financial News, global asset manager Franklin Templeton has acquired crypto investment firm 250 Digital and is launching a dedicated unit called Franklin Crypto. By adding active management capabilities to its existing digital-asset business, which has focused on venture capital (VC) and ETFs, Franklin Templeton plans to expand services for institutional investors.
Franklin Templeton and foreign media reported on the 5th that the core of the deal is the absorption of 250 Digital’s investment team and its liquid crypto-asset strategies, which were spun out from CoinFund. The company aims to use the newly created Franklin Crypto unit to build a specialized product lineup that can meet institutional investors’ needs.
The leadership team has also been finalized. Former CoinFund president Christopher Perkins will head Franklin Crypto, while former CoinFund chief investment officer (CIO) Seth Ginns will join as CIO. In addition, Franklin Templeton digital-asset veteran Tony Pecor will be in charge of portfolio management.
As of the end of last year, Franklin Templeton’s digital-asset assets under management (AUM) stood at about $1.8 billion. Its total assets under management reached approximately $1.7 trillion as of the end of February.
Franklin Templeton also chose an on-chain mergers and acquisitions (M&A) structure in which part of the purchase price is paid in its native token, Benji. Launched in 2021, Benji represents shares in the Franklin OnChain U.S. Government Money Fund (ticker: FOBXX). This fund is an ultra-short-term Money Market Fund (MMF) that mainly invests in U.S. Treasuries and cash, and has been combined with blockchain technology. In other words, the deal is drawing attention because a portion of the M&A consideration is paid with tokenized MMF shares, while settlement and transfer of ownership are handled directly on-chain via blockchain.
Xangle commented, “Franklin Templeton’s move to acquire 250 Digital and establish a dedicated digital-asset management organization represents a strategic expansion into an active-management-focused institutional crypto investment platform,” adding, “It is being viewed as a case of a traditional asset manager making a full-fledged shift into digital-asset management.”
Domestic securities firms see Franklin Templeton’s latest move in the same context as BlackRock’s purchase of the Uniswap (UNI governance token). Hong Sung-uk, researcher at NH Investment & Securities, analyzed, “This can be interpreted as a trend in which legacy financial institutions now regard not only Bitcoin but the broader universe of digital assets as investable asset classes.”
Ji-won Kim, researcher at KB Securities, also noted, “This is a strategy to broaden management capabilities and product offerings in response to growing digital-asset demand among institutional investors,” adding, “It aligns with the recent wave of digital-asset M&A activity by traditional financial institutions.”
elikim@fnnews.com Reporter Mi-hee Kim Reporter