Investment Giant Franklin Templeton’s CEO Holds Bitcoin, Ether and Other Tokens in Her Portfolio: Report

Jenny Johnson, the CEO of investment manager Franklin Templeton (BEN), said in an interview with Fortune that she holds bitcoin (BTC), ether (ETH), uniswap (UNI) and sushi (SUSHI) in her portfolio.

She said the investments are “small for her overall portfolio.”

“They’re all standard: ethereum, a little bitcoin, SushiSwap, Uniswap. I have a couple of different things like that,” she said. Johnson has spoken bullishly about the prospects of blockchain technology in disrupting the financial system but referred to bitcoin as a “distraction” from this.

“I can tell you, if bitcoin ever became so big that it became a threat to the U.S. dollar as the reserve currency, the U.S. would limit … the use of bitcoin,” she said at CoinDesk’s Consensus Festival in April this year. “Currencies are very important for governments … to manage their economies. They will not cede their currency to this concept of a global currency.”

Johnson added that a spot bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF) would be a better way of gaining bitcoin exposure than direct investment.

“But I think bitcoin has some challenges. It’s hard to anchor to any kind of investment thesis,” she said .” It tends to be a risk-on/risk-off type of asset. You just want to ensure clients are responsible in allocating bitcoin.”

Franklin Templeton, which has around $1.5 trillion in assets under management, offers an OnChain U.S. Government Money Market Fund (FOBXX), supported on Stella and Ethereum layer 2 blockchain Polygon.

The firm did not immediately respond to CoinDesk’s request for further comment.