Franklin Templeton CEO on Digital assets technology: adoption won't be slow or incremental

When most people look at the crypto and blockchain ecosystem, they most likely think about all that's already here and not much about what more could be.

Of course, what this proves is that people aren't looking at the technological solutions, but mostly the products or active services in the ecosystem.

This in itself, limits the average person from understanding the extensive merit of the technology that powers it all. It gets even worse when you consider the fact that most people don't seek any deep understanding of most things they come to be exposed to beyond the surface information available at the time of contact.

This means that the average person doesn't know how Bitcoin works, they just know that it's something people trade on some foreign exchange.

Certainly, one would imagine that this level of naivety is unique to regular people but the reality is that it goes beyond that, even individuals holding high offices across major businesses and the governments, very similarly approach new technology.

When it comes to digital assets technology, crypto and blockchain technology more specifically, a lot of people misunderstand so much about it and make decisions based on flawed conclusions that's most likely to cost them in the long run.

That said, they are a few who understand the potential that lies in a distributed ledger technology for decentralized, low-cost and borderless finance. These few people belong in some popular high-ranking financial institutions and they've actively made moves to capitalize on this.

Shift to digital asset technology won’t be ‘slow’ — Franklin Templeton CEO

In an opinion piece published in Fortune, Franklin Templeton CEO Jenny Johnson wrote that the “advantages of blockchain are so compelling that we don’t foresee the shift to digital asset technology being slow or incremental,” echoing the growing positive sentiment some traditional finance institutions have toward crypto.

“Indeed, we expect our industry will evolve more in the next five years than in the last 50,” Johnson said. “The pressing question is whether financial institutions will choose to embrace the digital asset wave (and the disruption coming with it), actively fight it or bury its head in the sand.” — Cointelegraph report

It is interesting to me that Jenny Johnson would throw in the question of if financial institutions will “bury its head in the sand” while the industry evolves fast in the next 5 years throw digital assets technology.

This is something we've occasionally discussed here on Hive whenever the topic of adoption is explored. It's to be expected that some institutions will be slow to adapt and some will simply be anti-crypto and blockchain technology.

We already have those and there are bound to be more. We have people we believe that crypto does not pose a risk to traditional finance but the reality is that the technology does, even if the active offerings may not look it.

You see, this is what I mentioned earlier, people mostly look at the surface of everything that's here and make judgements off that.

Bitcoin is worth trillions of dollars and Tether is buying and holding US treasuries more than countries like Germany.

Tether, the issuer of the world’s largest stablecoin, USDt, has surpassed Germany’s $111.4 billion worth of US Treasurys, data from the US Department of the Treasury shows.

Tether has surpassed $120 billion worth of Treasury bills, the firm shared in its attestation report for the first quarter of 2025. That makes Tether the 19th largest entity among all counties in terms of T-bill investments.

“This milestone not only reinforces the company’s conservative reserve management strategy but also highlights Tether’s growing role in distributing dollar-denominated liquidity at scale,” wrote Tether in the report. — Cointelegraph report

Surely, that doesn't sound like a threat at all.

At the end of the day, it doesn't matter what most people think. The solutions are there and a couple are going to capitalize on it. The banks could have easily dominated the stablecoin markets much earlier but didn't. Now they have to play catch-up.

This is how everyone else that sits back at this crucial point will have to struggle to compete. A lot is going to change in the next 5-10 years. So much that traditional finance will feel like a system last used 50 years back.

Posted Using INLEO