- An official at the $1.6 trillion investment giant Franklin Templeton recognizes XRP’s broad use cases beyond speculation and cross-border payments.
- The company’s XRP ETF has already grown to $232.3 million in AUM, massively surpassing its Ethereum ETF.
Fresh from the US Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) reaffirmation of XRP’s commodity status, an official from Franklin Templeton revealed why it has been betting heavily on the digital asset. The global asset manager, with around $1.68 trillion in assets under management (AUM), cited strong fundamentals and regulatory clarity as grounds for its decision to build its products around it.
Why Franklin Templeton is Bullish on XRP
In an interview on the Paul Barron Podcast, Roger Bayston, Head of Digital Assets at Franklin Templeton, revealed that the company didn’t buy XRP to speculate. He explained that they bought the asset because they needed it to tap into its network.
XRP powers the XRP Ledger (XRPL), so nothing in the network moves without it. Bayston emphasized that they are using the token to solve business problems, particularly matters pertaining to efficiency. Additionally, he stated that the ledger’s vast utility opens it up to opportunities after achieving regulatory clarity.
Interestingly, Bayston didn’t focus on XRP’s use case in cross-border payments. He zeroed in on its utility for maintaining transparency and immutability in record-keeping and data management, which are things the public often overlooks, as hype about future prices mostly drowns out their judgment.
As of December 31, 2025, Franklin Templeton disclosed holdings equivalent to 118 million XRP.
Franklin Templeton Crypto ETF Portfolio
To date, Franklin Templeton is one of the largest issuers of XRP exchange-traded funds (ETFs). As of Monday’s pre-market, the Franklin Templeton XRP ETF (XRPZ) has already raised $232.3 million in AUM. It accounts for around 16.22% of the $1.43 billion overall XRP ETF market value.
Franklin Templeton also offers ETFs for Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), and Solana (SOL), as well as a diversified fund that tracks a basket of cryptocurrencies. Its best-performing crypto ETFs are the Franklin Bitcoin ETF (EZBC) and XRPZ.
The investment giant’s Bitcoin ETF has accumulated $373 million in net inflows so far. Meanwhile, despite launching earlier than its XRP ETF, its Ether-based ETF has logged only $65 million in net inflows.
Final Thoughts
Overall, Franklin Templeton is not anchoring its adoption of XRP solely on the asset’s potential to reach $10, $100, or $1,000 per token. On a business standpoint, in addition to the growing demand for the asset in cross-border payments, stablecoins, real-world asset (RWA) tokenization, Decentralized Physical Infrastructure Networks (DePINs), and others, the investment manager recognizes its network’s vast potential in information management and opening its business to more opportunities as the SEC has officially declared it a commodity.
