Why Franklin Templeton Has Been Eyeing Tokenization for a Decade and What Comes After Money Funds | Roger Bayston
episode
Talking Tokens: Crypto, Onchain Finance, Investing
44 min
2 speakers
8 chapters
transcribed 1 month ago
Transcript
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Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
What is tokenization and why is Franklin Templeton interested in it?
short dated loans between a supplier of a product to the buyer of the product. Trade finance marketplaces twenty-five, thirty trillion dollars in size? Imagine if Trade Finance becomes on-chain and a number of different investors, not just the banks, but they can be in charge of a number of these different products, trade finance just being one of them. That's a lot of new capital market investment opportunities that begin to fall fall right into the camp of investors to be able to participate in. And banks have used these these marketplaces exclusively to make lots of profits.
Today's talking tokenization guest is Robert Baston, the head of digital assets at Franklin Templeton. The firm launched one of the first US registered tokenized money market funds, has expanded that fund across multiple public blockchains, introduced tokenized treasury solutions, launched crypto index ETFs, and the list goes on. There are probably a few traditional institutions that have been consistently active in bringing real world assets on chain, so I'm excited to talk. Roger, welcome on.
Thank you. Thanks for having me.
Thanks for being here. We usually like to start off this series by asking, How would you describe tokenization?
Oh, from our perspective, Franklin Templeton is a you know global asset manager. We've been around for eighty five plus years. Um, we have steadily increased the number of products and strategies we've had, but we are f firmly in the camp of the securities. a business. I mean that's where we started with. And so from our perspective Tokenization. has really meant Um Updating the transfer agency process. Trans Ragency uh Uh encompasses a number of different things that um you're permissive to do when you are in the business of issuing securities. And that you know, it's kinda dependent on the type of securities you you issue. But by and large, um, we see tokenization, at least from our early work on it, and now we've been at it probably
eight or nine years in updating the transfer agency processes to include blockchain infrastructure as part of kind of the record keeping and records management um layer that we have uh responsibilities in the business of issuing securities.
Right. And I know you have been at the firm for about thirty five years, which is pretty amazing. Like most people don't even last five years at a job anymore, you know, and you began as a research analyst before leading the fixed income strategies and then eventually, you know, overseeing Franklin Templeton's digital asset strategy, right? So like what was that journey really like? And then what led you to stay at the company for so many years? And then we're gonna go back to that eight or nine years that you were talking about, but I wanna hear more about your journey first. Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, thank you. Um So yeah, I started at Franklin in nineteen ninety one before we'd we'd purchased Templeton and a number of the other great brands that we have um accumulated over time. Yeah. Um yeah, in my closet I have a you know, swag that just says Franklin group of funds on it. That's uh it's really legacy type of um stuff. But I I think really my pathway has been one about um you know, personally, um, from a career perspective I just always feel you know, like I want to learn something new and pursue new things and Uh I did start um and worked for a number of years, a number of decades, quite frankly, helping lead our fixed income business at Franklin. And in that journey, I was always Looking for
What other types of fixed income investments could we rope into the opportunity set for our customers and clients globally? And so I I was always I always had that kind of mentality. And I learned long ago, uh, a little bit a little secret to just h hire people who are smarter than you. Um and you know, Smarts comes in a couple of different forms. They come in forms of like, you know, technical Smarts and I mean obviously with the amount of proliferation of different technologies that I've seen over the course of my almost forty year career.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What is tokenization and why is Franklin Templeton interested in it?
0:01–5:13
2
How did Roger Bayston’s 35‑year career lead him to focus on digital assets?
5:13–11:45
3
What vision does Franklin Templeton have for tokenizing money‑market funds like BENJI?
11:45–17:04
4
How does real‑time transfer and interest accrual change the money‑fund business?
17:04–22:31
5
What opportunities exist for tokenizing trade finance and other traditional assets?
22:31–27:29
6
How are banks and institutional investors adapting to blockchain infrastructure?
27:29–32:28
7
Which new asset classes could see the biggest growth from tokenization in the next decade?
32:28–37:24
8
How is trust being built and maintained in digital‑asset ecosystems?
37:24–44:25
Speakers
2 identifiedMore from Talking Tokens: Crypto, Onchain Finance, Investing
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