🇸🇬 TOKEN2049 just got a serious reality check for the tokenization industry.
Franklin Templeton CEO Jenny Johnson took a sharp shot at rival tokenized money market funds, calling them little more than “digital twins” of traditional funds.
Her point is simple but powerful:
Putting a traditional financial product on a blockchain does not automatically make it a true blockchain product.
If the blockchain is only being used to create a digital copy of an existing fund, investors may not get the full benefits of the technology — such as faster settlement, greater transparency, programmability, and new ways to move and use assets.
Johnson’s message is basically: Don’t just put old finance on a blockchain. Build finance that actually uses the blockchain.
And that distinction could become very important as tokenized assets move from hype toward real-world adoption.
The race is no longer just about who can tokenize an asset first.
It’s about who can make blockchain genuinely useful for financial markets.
TOKEN2049 is making one thing clear: the next phase of tokenization may be less about putting assets on-chain — and more about unlocking what being on-chain actually makes possible.
Franklin Templeton CEO Jenny Johnson took a sharp shot at rival tokenized money market funds, calling them little more than “digital twins” of traditional funds.
Her point is simple but powerful:
Putting a traditional financial product on a blockchain does not automatically make it a true blockchain product.
If the blockchain is only being used to create a digital copy of an existing fund, investors may not get the full benefits of the technology — such as faster settlement, greater transparency, programmability, and new ways to move and use assets.
Johnson’s message is basically: Don’t just put old finance on a blockchain. Build finance that actually uses the blockchain.
And that distinction could become very important as tokenized assets move from hype toward real-world adoption.
The race is no longer just about who can tokenize an asset first.
It’s about who can make blockchain genuinely useful for financial markets.
TOKEN2049 is making one thing clear: the next phase of tokenization may be less about putting assets on-chain — and more about unlocking what being on-chain actually makes possible.