Franklin Templeton Tokenized Funds Now Collateral on Bybit — SkimNews
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- Franklin Templeton expanded its off-exchange collateral program to Bybit, letting users pledge tokenized money market fund shares as collateral to borrow USDT or USDC while earning yield on the underlying assets.
- The tokenized shares represent about $686 million in net assets and are issued through Franklin Templeton's Benji Technology Platform, a blockchain-integrated record-keeping and transfer agency infrastructure.
- Underlying assets are held off-exchange by regulated custody platform ByCustody, with the value mirrored within Bybit's trading environment so users can generate yield and unlock trading liquidity simultaneously without moving assets onto the exchange.
- Benji currently pays a 3.7% annualized yield based on its latest seven-day rate, applied to assets held in off-exchange custody.
- Franklin Templeton already runs similar tokenized money market collateral partnerships with Binance and OKX; Sandy Kaul, Head of Digital Assets and Innovation, framed the expansion as letting investors "use my collateral more optimally" across major exchanges.
- Crypto.com and Deribit allow eligible institutional and professional users to back trades — including derivatives positions — with BlackRock's BUIDL fund, illustrating the broader industry pattern of tokenized funds being accepted as collateral across crypto venues.
Why it matters: Bybit users can now deploy $686 million in Franklin Templeton tokenized money market shares as collateral to borrow USDT or USDC while continuing to earn a 3.7% annualized yield on the underlying assets — held off-exchange by regulated custodian ByCustody rather than moved onto the trading platform, turning yield-generating assets into usable margin.
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