Japan's First Tokenized Investment Trust Validated in Real Operating Environment by MUFG

Bybit announced a collaboration with Franklin Templeton that lets eligible traders use Benji-issued money market fund shares as off-exchange collateral on the crypto platform, extending the asset manager's push into tokenized finance. Franklin Templeton shares trade at US$32.81, with a year to date share price return of 37.86% and a 1-year total shareholder return of 44.68%, while shorter-term momentum has faded with the 30-day share price return down 5.53% and the 90-day share price return down 4.73%. The company is building on its earlier tokenized funds and blockchain enabled products, including the BENJI tokenized money fund, by adding 3.2b of digital asset AUM and acquiring 250 Digital, and by embedding tokenized funds into partner wallets such as MoonPay and Payward. A widely followed narrative pegs fair value at $35.50, above the last close of $32.81, while the stock trades at 22x earnings, below the US Capital Markets industry on 39.7x and peers at 35.9x but above the fair ratio of 12.8x. Franklin Templeton's story could still shift if fee pressure from large platforms intensifies or if integration across its expanded credit and digital franchises stumbles.

The Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation announced the DTCC tokenization service on May 4, 2026, a platform designed to bring Russell 1000 components, ETFs, and US Treasuries onto distributed ledgers. With over 50 firms including BlackRock, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, Circle, Ondo, and Nasdaq participating, the service moved into limited production in July 2026 following a December 2025 SEC No-Action Letter. DTCC CEO Frank La Salla said tokenization will significantly change how markets operate by bringing new levels of liquidity, transparency, and efficiency to investors, while Brian Steele of the DTCC added that the service is designed to provide systemic scale where deep liquidity already lives. The infrastructure shift extends beyond the DTCC: Nasdaq secured SEC approval on March 18, 2026, under Release 34-105047, to facilitate tokenized settlement on the same order book, ticker, and CUSIP as traditional assets, NYSE Arca followed with rule change SR-NYSEARCA-2026-45 effective April 29, 2026, and the broader NYSE received approval for its own related filings on April 17, 2026. The SEC issued a five-year conditional innovation exemption on September 17, 2026, specifically for tokenized NMS stocks, while the CFTC clarified through Staff Letter 25-39 and an updated FAQ on September 24, 2026, that tokenized collateral may be used for derivatives margin. The tokenized asset market tracked by rwa.xyz stood at approximately $38.6 billion as of late September 2026, up from $2 billion in 2022, with tokenized Treasuries accounting for $14.7 billion to $15.65 billion of that total, led by BlackRock's BUIDL at $2.70 billion, Circle's USYC at $2.60 billion, and Ondo's USDY at $2.23 billion. A June 1, 2026, Citi report estimates a base case of $5.5 trillion in tokenized assets and $1.9 trillion in stablecoins by 2030, though it warns of a messy period in which tokenized and legacy systems operate side by side.

Avalanche's AVAX token climbed to a six-month high Tuesday after Goldman Sachs made its roughly $100 billion Treasury money-market fund available through Lynq, an institutional settlement network built on Avalanche blockchain technology. AVAX rose as high as $11.99 and was recently up about 10% for the day, following Monday's announcement that Goldman Sachs' Financial Square Treasury Instruments Fund, known as FTIXX, can now be accessed by qualified U.S. participants through Lynq. The Goldman fund itself has not been tokenized; instead, tZERO Securities, an SEC-registered broker-dealer, is facilitating access to the existing fund through Lynq, which tZERO described as roughly a $100 billion fund. Lynq was developed by Arca Labs, Tassat and tZERO as a real-time settlement network for institutional digital assets, launching in July 2025 with its first transaction recording client assets on the Avalanche blockchain, while Avalanche provides the open-source Layer 1 infrastructure and U.S. Bank serves as Lynq's qualified cash custodian. Lynq said in February that assets on the platform had surpassed $89 million and that it had partnerships with more than 30 institutional digital-asset firms, with existing partners and participants including Galaxy, Crypto.com, FalconX, Fireblocks, Wintermute and B2C2.

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.