In brief
- Bybit and Franklin Templeton announced a strategic collaboration on 28 September 2026. Eligible Bybit clients can now pledge Benji-issued tokenized money market fund shares as collateral for USDT or USDC trading credit.
- The fund shares stay off the exchange with the custodian ByCustody. Bybit only mirrors their value, so clients keep earning the fund’s yield.
- A tokenized wealth product for wallet users on Bybit and the Mantle chain is also planned, with details to come later.
Franklin Templeton has added Bybit to the list of crypto exchanges that accept its tokenized money market fund as trading collateral. According to Bybit’s press release of 28 September 2026, eligible clients can pledge fund shares issued on Franklin Templeton’s Benji Technology Platform and draw USDT or USDC credit lines for trading.
The shares never move to the exchange. ByCustody, an institutional custody platform, holds them, and Bybit mirrors their value inside its trading system. The client keeps the fund’s yield while using the same assets to back positions. Bybit says this cuts counterparty exposure, because the collateral is not held by the exchange itself and so is out of reach if an exchange is hacked.
What the fund is worth and what it pays
The fund behind the shares is the Franklin OnChain U.S. Government Money Fund (FOBXX), which invests mainly in US government securities, cash and repurchase agreements. Crypto.news, citing Franklin Templeton’s fund page, reports $686.64 million in net assets as of 31 August and a seven-day current yield of 3.57% as of 16 September. One BENJI token represents one fund share.
The release does not publish the eligibility rules, the loan-to-value ratio Bybit applies to the shares, or the countries where the program is open.
The same model at Binance, OKX and beyond
Bybit is not the first venue for this setup. CoinDesk notes that Franklin Templeton already offers the fund as off-exchange collateral to clients of Binance and OKX. The Binance program was announced on 11 February. Rival products follow the same logic: Crypto.com and Deribit accept BlackRock’s BUIDL fund as collateral, and in June a quant fund used UBS’s tokenized uMINT fund on Bybit through ByCustody and DigiFT.
“So now I’m able to really look across the top exchanges and be able as an investor to use my collateral more optimally while earning yield on it,” Sandy Kaul, Franklin Templeton’s head of digital assets and innovation, told CoinDesk. Yoyee Wang, Bybit’s global head of RWA and TradFi, said in the release that institutions “increasingly expect the same flexibility, capital efficiency, and risk management standards they are accustomed to in traditional markets.”
The second half of the deal targets retail. The two firms plan a tokenized wealth product giving wallet-based investors access to Franklin Templeton strategies on the Bybit exchange and the Mantle chain, plus education content on diversification and goals-based investing. Bybit and Mantle will publish those details separately.
