CoinDesk
Jenny Johnson, CEO of Franklin Templeton — a $1.74 trillion asset manager — pulled no punches at the Proof of Talk summit in Paris, stating that major financial institutions are slow-walking public blockchain adoption because the technology directly threatens their fee-based business models. "This technology threatens a huge number of business models that exist today in traditional finance," Johnson said. "If you see any kind of hesitation, it's because there is a threat to the business model. Think about the toll-takers in a transaction."
Why it matters
Johnson's argument cuts to the heart of institutional crypto hesitation: smart-contract-driven settlement eliminates the need for banks to sit in the middle of transactions collecting fees. As evidence, she pointed to Franklin Templeton's own tokenized money market fund, Benji, which runs on the Stellar blockchain. The internal cost comparison was stark — $1.30 per transaction on legacy systems versus $1.13 on Stellar across 50,000 transactions. That delta, multiplied across the trillions flowing through traditional finance daily, represents an existential revenue threat to incumbent intermediaries.
Johnson also announced a new partnership with MoonPay, allowing institutional investors to move seamlessly between stablecoins and Benji through an on-chain workflow — a concrete signal that Franklin Templeton is not waiting for Wall Street to catch up.
Market impact
Johnson acknowledged Bitcoin's self-custody and privacy advantages but argued that most investors will continue to demand regulated custodians and standardized compliance rails as institutional capital migrates on-chain.
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