Mantle

Crypto exchange giant Bybit announced on the 28th a strategic partnership with asset management giant Franklin Templeton, which has 1.7 trillion dollars in assets under management. As the first phase of the partnership, eligible institutional investors can now use shares of a tokenized money market fund issued through Franklin Templeton's proprietary blockchain-integrated record-keeping system, the Benji Technology Platform, as off-exchange collateral for trading on Bybit. By depositing the fund shares as collateral through the institutional custody platform ByCustody, investors can access USDT or USDC trading credit lines while keeping the underlying assets held off-exchange, supporting trading activity while maintaining yield on their holdings. The partnership also extends to wallet-based individual investors, with plans to offer tokenized asset management products that provide access to Franklin Templeton's investment strategies on the Bybit exchange and the Mantle blockchain, as well as educational content to help users understand goal-based investing and diversification. Yooyi Wang, Bybit's global head of the real-world assets and traditional finance division, said that as institutional adoption of digital assets accelerates, investors are increasingly demanding the same level of flexibility, capital efficiency, and risk management standards from the crypto industry as they get from traditional markets.