Franklin Templeton expands XRP Ledger position with $150M tokenized fund purchase

What happened

Franklin Templeton added approximately $150 million in sgBENJI shares to the XRP Ledger this week, according to reports from CoinGape and The Crypto Basic. The transaction consisted of two matching $75 million cash subscription receipts recorded on Wednesday, followed by corresponding share issuances on Thursday. Each batch delivered just over 72.18 million sgBENJI shares priced at $1.039 per share.

The inflow nearly quadrupled Franklin's tokenized fund position on the ledger overnight. Before the purchase, the asset manager held roughly 48 million shares on the XRPL. That figure has now climbed to nearly 193 million shares, with a current value of approximately $200 million at prevailing prices.

All of Franklin's sgBENJI holdings sit within a single wallet governed by eight signing addresses, the same structure used by the asset manager's issuing account. The multi-signature arrangement allows any two of the eight addresses to jointly approve transactions, while Franklin retains the ability to freeze balances or recover tokens if needed. CoinGape noted this design is typical of regulated tokenized fund structures, where issuers use multi-signature accounts to enforce compliance controls while maintaining assets on a public ledger.

Why it matters

Franklin's expanded commitment to the XRP Ledger reflects a broader institutional shift toward tokenized real-world assets. The Crypto Basic reported that sgBENJI has become the largest distributed RWA on the XRPL when excluding stablecoins, representing 56% of the network's non-stablecoin distributed asset value. When stablecoins are included, the fund ranks second only to Ripple's RLUSD, which holds approximately $930 million. This repositioning underscores growing competition among institutions to establish meaningful positions in the emerging tokenized asset ecosystem.

The move also demonstrates Franklin's conviction in the XRP Ledger's technical capabilities for institutional use. The company's digital assets leadership has publicly cited the ledger's throughput, cost, and reliability as reasons institutions are choosing it over alternative blockchains. The purchase arrives as Franklin has been simultaneously expanding utility for its tokenized shares through partnerships with cryptocurrency platforms like Bybit, which allows eligible clients to pledge sgBENJI as collateral for stablecoin credit lines, and HashKey, which brings the fund to Asian professional investors.

Background

Franklin Templeton launched its tokenized U.S. Treasury fund, sgBENJI, through its Singapore-regulated Benji Investments division in 2025. The product represents shares in the Franklin OnChain U.S. Dollar Short-Term Money Market Fund. Initially deployed on Stellar in September 2025, sgBENJI expanded to the XRP Ledger on July 28, 2026. According to The Crypto Basic, when it first appeared on the XRPL, its value stood at just $9.71. By mid-September, the XRPL held $48.33 million, surpassing Stellar's $24.95 million for the first time.

Franklin's institutional presence on XRPL grew following a September 2025 partnership between Ripple and DBS that included Franklin Templeton. This collaboration enabled DBS Digital Exchange clients to swap between sgBENJI and Ripple's RLUSD stablecoin and explore using fund tokens as collateral. Franklin has also secured SEC clearance for its funds to hold tokenized assets and engaged with the SEC's Crypto Task Force on regulatory questions concerning how tokenized funds interact with the 1940 Act Innovation Exemption.

The broader XRPL tokenized asset market has expanded significantly. The Crypto Basic noted that the XRP Ledger now holds $439 million in U.S. Treasury debt products across multiple issuers, representing more than 68% of the network's distributed RWA value excluding stablecoins. Beyond Treasury products, the XRPL's total distributed RWA market stands at $5.381 billion when stablecoins are excluded, reflecting rapid institutional adoption across the platform.

What to watch

The concentration of Franklin's entire sgBENJI position in a single wallet raises questions about structure and end-user identity. CoinGape reported that Franklin has not clarified whether the wallet functions as an omnibus account holding multiple clients or represents a single large institutional allocation. This distinction carries implications for understanding the true distribution of tokenized assets across the XRPL ecosystem.

Broader market conditions may also influence further institutional deployment. U.Today noted that while Franklin Templeton's XRP ETF recorded $3.55 million in net inflows on October 23, XRP's price movement remained unstable amid wider market volatility. The outlet cautioned that sustained institutional purchases do not guarantee immediate price recovery, as broader market sentiment continues to influence asset performance across the crypto sector.

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