Franklin Templeton puts $150 million of fund shares on the XRP Ledger, all in one wallet

Franklin Templeton added about $150 million of tokenized money market fund shares to the XRP Ledger last week, according to a CoinDesk review of ledger records. A single wallet now holds nearly 193 million shares of the fund, up from about 48 million before Thursday.

What the ledger shows

The token, sgBENJI, represents shares in the Singapore-domiciled Franklin OnChain U.S. Dollar Short-Term Money Market Fund. The fund holds short-term dollar debt and money market instruments, including government paper, commercial paper and bank deposits, and returns build up in the share price rather than being paid out.

• On Wednesday the issuing account recorded two subscription receipts of $75 million each.
• On Thursday it issued two batches of just over 72.18 million shares each, at 02:58 and 04:13 UTC.
• At the $1.039 share price in those records, the wallet's holding is worth about $200 million. RWA.xyz, which values the shares at $1, lists it at about $193 million.

What we do not know

CoinDesk reports that the number of wallets holding sgBENJI on the ledger stayed at one, and that the wallet and Franklin's issuing account authorize the same eight signing addresses, any two of which can approve a transaction. That makes it unclear whether this is one investor or an omnibus account holding for several. The investors, the source of the cash and any link to Franklin's existing holdings on Stellar are not disclosed, and Franklin had not answered CoinDesk's questions at the time of publication. Holding the token directly on XRPL requires Franklin's approval, and the issuer can freeze balances and recover tokens.

So this is a large issuance, but not evidence of broad demand: one wallet is not a market.

Where it ranks

Per RWA.xyz figures cited by CoinDesk, Franklin is now the second-largest tokenized asset platform on XRPL, behind Ripple's RLUSD stablecoin at about $930 million and ahead of Ondo at $185 million. Second place is mostly the story of this one wallet: before Thursday, the position was a quarter of its present size.

What it means for XRP holders

Tokenized fund shares are paid for in dollars and settle in a fund's own units. They do not require buying XRP, and the token is used only for network fees. A bigger asset base on the ledger shows institutions will use it; it does not by itself create demand for the coin. XRP traded near $1.29 on Monday on Yahoo Finance data, about 51% below its level a year ago.

Watch for whether Franklin or the investor identifies itself, whether more wallets appear, and how the Stellar holdings move. Our crypto prices page tracks the major coins.

Sources: CoinDesk (ledger records, RWA.xyz figures as cited); XRP price from Yahoo Finance. Information, not investment advice.