Wall Street spent years asking whether cryptocurrency deserved to become part of traditional finance.

Franklin Templeton now believes that may be the wrong question.

The more important question, according to Franklin Crypto head Chris Perkins, is whether traditional finance itself is about to become more like crypto.

That means markets operating around the clock.

Assets moving on blockchains.

Transactions settling faster.

Investment products represented as digital tokens.

And financial assets becoming programmable rather than simply recorded in conventional databases.

“Every institution is integrating blockchain technology in one way, shape or form,” Perkins said in an interview with Coinage, arguing that market structure is changing rapidly. He predicted an era of 24/7 markets in which institutions that cannot operate continuously risk falling behind.

That is an unusually aggressive prediction from one of the world's largest traditional asset managers.

But Franklin Templeton is not merely talking about the trend.

The company has been investing in it.

Bitcoin receives most of the attention whenever traditional financial institutions discuss crypto.

Franklin Templeton sees another opportunity as potentially much larger.

Tokenization.

The concept is simple.

Take a conventional financial asset — a Treasury fund, money-market fund, bond, stock or other real-world asset — and represent ownership or economic rights using blockchain-based tokens.

The objective is not necessarily to turn Wall Street into a giant casino.

It is to rebuild the infrastructure beneath Wall Street.

That distinction is critical.

Instead of asking whether Bitcoin should replace dollars or traditional securities, tokenization asks whether blockchain technology can make those existing assets easier to transfer, settle and use.

Franklin believes the answer increasingly is yes.

Franklin Templeton has spent years developing Benji, the technology platform behind its Franklin OnChain U.S. Government Money Fund.

The fund uses blockchain infrastructure to represent ownership and deliver information about investments in a digital format.

Franklin's own research describes a tokenized money-market fund in which investors can receive yield through incremental token issuance directly into their wallets.

That is fundamentally different from simply putting a traditional asset on a blockchain without changing how it operates.

The token can become part of the transaction infrastructure itself.

It can potentially move between wallets.

It can interact with other blockchain-based financial applications.

And it can operate continuously rather than waiting for traditional market hours.

Traditional financial markets operate according to schedules.

Stock exchanges open and close.

Bond markets have operating conventions.

Fund transactions often settle according to established cycles.

Banks process payments through specific windows.

Crypto operates differently.

A blockchain network can function 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Perkins believes tokenization could import that feature into mainstream finance.

Imagine being able to move a tokenized Treasury fund on Saturday night.

Or collateralize an asset on Sunday.

Or execute a transaction without waiting for Monday's market open.

That changes the concept of liquidity.

Instead of markets existing within fixed operating hours, they become continuously available infrastructure.

One of the most interesting examples is stablecoins.

A stablecoin effectively represents a dollar-like asset on a blockchain.

Its value is designed to remain tied to a fiat currency, while the token can move between blockchain addresses.

For Perkins, this illustrates one of the biggest benefits of tokenization.

An old financial asset becomes transferable using new infrastructure.

The innovation is not necessarily the underlying asset.

It is the way the asset moves.

That is why Franklin sees crypto as more than a new asset class.

It sees blockchain as a new financial rail.

A stablecoin generally aims to maintain a stable value.

A tokenized money-market fund can potentially provide both a digital representation and an investment return.

Franklin's own tokenization work highlights the possibility of combining yield-bearing assets with blockchain-based transfer and settlement.

That creates a potentially powerful financial primitive.

An investor could hold an asset that earns yield while also being able to move it through blockchain-based infrastructure.

For corporate treasurers, this could eventually become particularly important.

Companies routinely move large amounts of cash between accounts and financial instruments.

Every delay carries an opportunity cost.

If tokenization makes those transfers faster and more flexible, the economic value could become substantial.

Franklin Templeton is far from alone.

Large financial institutions are increasingly experimenting with tokenized funds, digital securities and blockchain-based settlement.

BlackRock has expanded its tokenization initiatives.

Coinbase is pushing beyond traditional cryptocurrency trading into broader financial infrastructure.

Robinhood has been exploring tokenized securities and extended-hours or around-the-clock market access.

The common theme is unmistakable.

Traditional financial firms are borrowing ideas that were originally associated with crypto.

24/7 markets.

Digital wallets.

Programmable assets.

Blockchain settlement.

Tokenized ownership.

What started as an alternative financial system is increasingly becoming technology that traditional institutions want to use themselves.

Earlier this year, Franklin Templeton completed its acquisition of 250 Digital, a crypto investment firm spun out of CoinFund that was previously led by Perkins. The acquisition folded the team and its strategies into the newly established Franklin Crypto unit.

That is not the behavior of a traditional asset manager treating crypto as a temporary trend.

It suggests Franklin wants dedicated expertise inside the organization.

The company has also continued building its tokenization infrastructure.

The message is clear:

Blockchain is becoming part of the firm's long-term financial strategy.

The cryptocurrency industry's next major growth phase may therefore have little to do with creating new tokens.

It could involve putting existing assets on blockchain networks.

Treasury securities.

Money-market funds.

Corporate bonds.

Private credit.

Real estate.

Commodities.

Other financial claims.

The category is generally referred to as real-world assets, or RWAs.

Tokenization can potentially make those assets easier to transfer, automate and integrate into digital financial applications.

That opens the door to enormous markets.

Traditional finance is already worth hundreds of trillions of dollars globally.

Crypto does not need to replace that system to become enormously valuable.

It can provide the infrastructure underneath it.

Perkins believes the market may be underestimating how dramatically tokenization can change liquidity.

Today, some assets are difficult to transfer.

Certain markets operate only during business hours.

Settlement can require intermediaries.

Ownership records may sit in multiple databases.

Tokenization has the potential to consolidate portions of that process.

Franklin's research notes that tokenized real-world assets can potentially provide on-chain ownership records, faster settlement and the ability to support 24/7/365 trading.

That is a substantial change.

Liquidity would no longer depend entirely on traditional market hours and intermediary infrastructure.

The technology does not magically eliminate financial regulation.

A token representing a Treasury fund still represents a financial product subject to rules.

Custody remains important.

Legal ownership must be clearly defined.

Smart contracts can contain vulnerabilities.

Blockchains have different levels of scalability, security and decentralization.

And institutions still need to know who is ultimately responsible when something goes wrong.

So tokenization does not eliminate Wall Street.

It changes the technology beneath Wall Street.

The transition to tokenized finance will depend heavily on regulation.

Financial institutions need to know whether tokenized assets receive the same legal treatment as traditional securities.

They need rules governing custody.

They need frameworks for settlement.

They need clarity around stablecoins.

And they need to know how blockchain transactions interact with existing financial regulations.

The U.S. government's evolving digital-asset framework will therefore play an important role in determining how quickly tokenization moves into the mainstream.

This may be the most important part of Franklin Templeton's thesis.

The future of crypto may not be defined by Bitcoin replacing traditional finance.

It may be defined by traditional finance quietly adopting the technologies crypto pioneered.

Wall Street could eventually become more crypto-like without becoming “crypto” in the conventional sense.

Markets may operate 24/7.

Funds may exist as tokens.

Settlement may happen directly on-chain.

Collateral may move between digital wallets.

And financial assets may become programmable.

That would be a very different outcome from the original vision of many cryptocurrency advocates.

But it could be much larger economically.

Traditional finance has the regulation, capital, institutions and relationships.

Crypto has the technology for programmable ownership, digital settlement and around-the-clock markets.

Tokenization combines the two.

That is why Franklin Templeton's argument is attracting attention.

It is not saying that Bitcoin is irrelevant.

It is saying that Bitcoin may not be the biggest long-term contribution of blockchain technology to finance.

The bigger contribution could be infrastructure.

For years, the debate was:

“Should institutions invest in crypto?”

Now a different question is emerging:

“Which parts of traditional finance should be rebuilt using blockchain?”

That is a much larger question.

If Franklin Templeton is right, the next phase of crypto adoption will not necessarily look like people buying more tokens.

It could look like banks issuing tokenized assets.

Asset managers offering blockchain-based funds.

Companies moving treasury assets around the clock.

Investors trading securities outside traditional market hours.

And financial institutions quietly replacing pieces of legacy infrastructure with blockchain rails.

The revolution may therefore arrive without Wall Street announcing that it has become crypto.

It may simply start behaving like it.

And that is why Franklin Templeton believes the biggest crypto story may be hiding in plain sight.