BounceBit, a crypto infrastructure provider that combines features of centralized and decentralized finance (CeDeFi), is bringing Franklin Templeton’s tokenized money market fund into its structured yield platform BB Prime, combining U.S. Treasury yields with crypto funding and basis arbitrage strategies.
The tokenized fund, which belongs to the suite of BENJI products, will serve as a collateral and settlement instrument for investment strategies. This way, investors can reap the underlying Treasury yield while adding additional return sources.
Tokenized money market funds, now a roughly $7 billion asset class, have been at the forefront of tokenization efforts. Global asset manager BlackRock created with tokenization firm Securitize the BUIDL token, backed by short-term U.S. government securities, and it’s becoming increasingly accepted as collateral on exchanges. Meanwhile, Bank of New York Mellon and Goldman Sachs recently rolled out tokenized money market funds as institutional investors.
Franklin Templeton, one of the earliest traditional asset managers to issue tokenized funds on public blockchains, first launched its tokenized U.S. money market fund BENJI in 2021. “We have structured our suite of BENJI tokenized money market fund products to support a wide range of global client needs across retail, wealth, institutional, bank and collateral use cases,” the firm said in a statement.
BounceBit have worked with FT to incorporate operational use of its tokens in active yield strategies, marking what BounceBit CEO Jack Lu described as “the first real-world application of tokenized Treasuries in active yield strategies.”
“Partnering with Wall Street titans like Franklin Templeton signifies that institutional-grade RWA products have moved beyond experimentation into scalable, usable infrastructure,” Lu said.
The launch follows BounceBit’s earlier pilot using BlackRock’s BUIDL token as collateral for a bitcoin derivatives strategy that produced over 20% annualized returns.
BB Prime is currently accepting pre-registrations ahead of a public rollout.
Read more: Goldman Sachs and BNY Mellon Team Up for Tokenized Money Market Funds