Franklin Templeton's Tokenized Money Fund Lists on HashKey in Asia

Franklin Templeton's tokenized money market fund now trades on HashKey Exchange. The Franklin OnChain U.S. Government Liquidity Fund, token ticker grBENJI, went live on the Hong Kong platform's Earn channel on 24 August. Professional investors only. It is not offered to the Hong Kong public. The fund holds US government money market instruments and dollar cash assets, and the token is the on-chain wrapper around a share of it. Franklin Templeton put its assets under management at $1.80 trillion as of 31 July, across more than 35 countries.

Two dates on one launch

The joint release is datelined Hong Kong, 25 August. CoinDesk published its story that day. Both crypto.news and the release itself date the Earn-channel listing to 24 August, so the product went live and was announced the following morning. Neither company addresses the gap.

HashKey holds Type 1 and Type 7 licences from Hong Kong's Securities and Futures Commission, covering dealing in securities and operating an automated trading service, alongside a licence under the territory's anti-money-laundering ordinance. That licensing is what the listing is for. A US money fund reaches Asian institutions through a supervised venue instead of an offshore one.

How big the tokenized Treasury market is depends on who counts

CoinDesk, citing the tracker rwa.xyz, says tokenized Treasury and money market funds have grown 1,500% to $15 billion over two years. crypto.news cites the same tracker as of 23 August and gives tokenized Treasury debt at $15.6 billion, inside a $38.2 billion total for tokenized real-world assets. The Crypto Times puts the segment near $16 billion across more than 80 assets in early August. The three prints do not reconcile. This desk published $36.8 billion as the whole-market figure on 2 August, relayed from a single weekly digest with no asset-class breakdown. The distance to $38.2 billion is three weeks of growth, or two trackers counting differently, and we could not establish which.

What the two firms say comes next

Chetan Karkhanis, senior vice president for digital assets client engagement at Franklin Templeton, called the listing a first step.

"We look forward to deepening this partnership by expanding beyond tokenized money market funds into other tokenized products over time," Karkhanis said.

Haiyang Ru, chief executive of HashKey Exchange, spoke of institutional demand for compliant yield products backed by real-world assets. Two outlets render that line in different words, so it appears here as paraphrase and not as a quotation. The release itself is warmer, calling the partnership a milestone for digital assets in Asia.

Where the fund can actually be bought

The release lists HashKey's platform across Hong Kong, Singapore, Tokyo, Dubai and Bermuda. crypto.news describes Singapore, Tokyo and Bermuda as planned expansion alongside Hong Kong. The two readings do not agree, and nothing located settles whether all five are live today. The Crypto Times is the only outlet located that details the underlying vehicle: the US-registered Franklin OnChain U.S. Government Money Fund, launched in April 2021, one BENJI token to one share, a $1.00 net asset value target, and nine chains carrying the token. It also puts BENJI's distributed value near $2.5 billion. Both of those stand on that one report.

Franklin cleared a piece of US regulation earlier this month. An SEC staff no-action letter dated 12 August lets the manager's traditional funds hold tokenized BENJI shares for cash management. coingape says that clearance could take effect in the fourth quarter, a timing no other outlet located carries and one the letter does not set. HashKey said on 18 August it would use Hong Kong's first regulated dollar-pegged local stablecoin for cross-border trade and insurance settlement with the UAE. Whether the Franklin fund travels the same road into the Gulf is not something either firm has said.