Franklin Templeton Acquires 250 Digital to Form Franklin Crypto, Targeting Institutional Investors

Franklin Templeton has agreed to acquire 250 Digital, a spinoff from crypto investment firm CoinFund, to form a new entity called Franklin Crypto that will offer cryptocurrency investment strategies designed for institutional investors, the Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday. The acquisition marks a significant expansion of Franklin Templeton's presence in the digital asset space. The asset manager, which oversees more than $1.5 trillion in assets, has been among the more forward-leaning traditional financial institutions in building out crypto capabilities, having launched a Bitcoin ETF and a tokenized money market fund in recent years. 250 Digital was spun out of CoinFund to focus on institutional-grade crypto investment products. By absorbing it, Franklin Templeton gains investment talent and infrastructure tailored to the specific compliance, custody, and risk management requirements of pension funds, endowments, sovereign wealth funds, and other large institutional allocators. The formation of Franklin Crypto comes as institutional adoption of digital assets accelerates, driven partly by the approval of spot Bitcoin and Ethereum ETFs in the United States and a more permissive regulatory posture from the Trump administration toward crypto markets. Traditional asset managers have been under pressure to offer crypto exposure to clients who want it without leaving the familiar frameworks of regulated funds and established counterparties. Franklin Templeton's move is part of a broader wave of legacy finance firms acquiring or building out crypto capabilities to compete with native crypto firms that have built distribution to institutional clients. The Wall Street Journal, via Techmeme, reported the acquisition on April 1, 2026.