In this week’s episode of Yahoo Finance Future Focus, our host Brian McGleenon spoke with Roger Bayston, who leads digital asset strategy at Franklin Templeton. Bayston explained why traditional financial institutions were shifting their focus away from crypto price speculation and toward blockchain infrastructure. While bitcoin headlines continued to dominate, he said the real momentum among banks and asset managers was building around DeFi, stablecoins, and the tokenisation of real-world assets. He outlined how blockchain technology could modernize record-keeping, reduce friction in capital markets, and unlock new efficiencies across a global financial system worth more than $100tn.
Bayston also discussed Franklin Templeton’s tokenised money market fund, “Benji,” which ran across multiple blockchains including ethereum, and explained why speed, atomic settlement, and digital wallets would be critical to institutional adoption. Looking ahead to 2026, he said the firm planned to expand its internal “tokenisation factory,” positioning itself for what leaders like Larry Fink had described as the inevitable tokenisation of financial assets.