Franklin Templeton Launches Tokenized U.S. Treasury Fund in Luxembourg

Franklin Templeton, a major global asset manager, said Wednesday it has launched its tokenized U.S. Treasury fund in Luxembourg

Asset management giant Franklin Templeton announced the launch of its tokenized U.S. Treasury fund in Luxembourg, opening up access to the fund for European institutional investors.

The launch of the Franklin OnChain U.S. Government Money Fund marks the first Luxembourg-domiciled fund to invest in U.S. government securities that is fully tokenized, the asset manager said in a press release Wednesday. Shares in the fund are recorded and transferred on the blockchain, rather than through traditional processes, using Franklin Templeton’s proprietary blockchain-based transfer agency platform to handle transactions for efficiency, transparency and security.

The fund is available on the Stellar Lumens network (XLM) for institutional investors in Austria, France, Germany, Italy, Liechtenstein, the Netherlands, Spain and Switzerland, following regulatory approval in October by Luxembourg regulators. The U.S.-registered version of the fund has attracted over $580 million of assets since its 2021 debut and is limited to U.S.-based investors, according to data from rwa.xyz.

Tokenized U.S. Treasuries have been at the forefront of real-world asset tokenization efforts, which have grown into a $4 billion asset class in 2023. Franklin Templeton was the first among traditional financial institutions to launch such a product, and its fund is now the third largest tokenized treasury fund by assets under management, behind Hashnote's USYC and BUIDL, which are issued by BlackRock and Securitize, respectively.