Bybit accepts Franklin Templeton tokenized funds as trading collateral

Franklin Templeton has teamed up with crypto exchange Bybit to let eligible institutional clients use tokenized shares of the asset manager’s money market funds as collateral for stablecoin credit lines. The shares are issued through Franklin Templeton’s Benji platform, and under the arrangement clients do not need to move the underlying fund assets onto Bybit; those assets remain in off-exchange custody while the pledged tokens secure borrowing capacity.

Clients participating in the program can obtain credit lines denominated in USDT or USDC and use those stablecoins to trade on Bybit. Franklin Templeton and Bybit said this structure enables institutions to retain yield from their money market fund holdings even as they deploy those holdings to finance crypto trading activity without liquidating the fund positions.

The firms also indicated plans to introduce a tokenized investment product targeted at Bybit wallet users and built on the Mantle network, but they have not released specifics about timing or structure. The announcement comes amid increasing demand for tokenized money market funds: the Bank for International Settlements estimated the market at more than $9 billion as of September 2025.

Franklin Templeton’s Benji platform reported $1.98 billion in assets under management as of April, a figure that, according to RWA.xyz data cited in the source, has since fallen to about $669 million. For context, BlackRock’s USD Institutional Digital Liquidity Fund (BUIDL) is currently the largest tokenized money market fund at $2.2 billion and is accepted as collateral on platforms including Crypto.com and Deribit; Binance also permits certain institutional clients to use BUIDL as off-exchange collateral.