Franklin Templeton Weighs New Crypto Fund Investing in Tokens Beyond Bitcoin, Ether: Report

• The fund would target institutional investors, according to the report.

• The asset manager already has a spot bitcoin ETF and has applied for a similar ether offering.

Franklin Templeton, the $1.6 trillion U.S. Silicon Valley asset manager, is considering a new crypto-focused investment fund, The Information reported Thursday citing people with direct knowledge of the effort.

The investment vehicle would be structured as a private fund targeting institutional investors and invest in cryptocurrencies beyond bitcoin (BTC) and ether (ETH). The asset manager is also thinking about passing staking rewards on to the fund’s investors, according to the report.

Franklin Templeton is one of several traditional finance heavyweights venturing into the digital asset industry to offer crypto and tokenized asset investments to clients.

It started a spot bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF) in the U.S. earlier this year and applied to list a similar offering for the second-largest crypto asset, ether. It also opened a tokenized U.S. government bond fund using the Stellar (XLM) network in 2021, years before BlackRock did.

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