Jenny Johnson, the CEO of Franklin Templeton, believes that we are still at the beginning stages of the Bitcoin investment cycle and that major institutional investors have not yet fully entered the market.
In a recent interview with CNBC, Johnson expressed her views on the current state of the market, stating that the first wave of early adopters is just the beginning, and the next wave will see much larger institutions getting involved.
She emphasized that as more investors and fund managers become comfortable with digital assets and their underlying technologies, institutional interest will continue to grow.
Johnson is a strong advocate for blockchain innovation and has previously stated her belief that all exchange-traded funds and mutual funds will one day be on the blockchain.
She highlighted the lower data processing costs and new use cases as the driving forces behind her support for blockchain technologies and digital assets.
In an experiment conducted by her firm, traditional data processing systems were compared to blockchain information systems, and the team was amazed at the significant cost reduction achieved by using blockchain for data transmission.
Johnson also pointed out the novel use cases for digital assets, such as Rihanna’s use of nonfungible tokens (NFTs) to tokenize royalty rights to her song “B-tch Better Have My Money” and transfer those rights to NFT holders.
These examples led Johnson to describe tokenization as “securitization done on steroids,” highlighting the potential of digital assets to unlock previously inaccessible liquidity and reveal hidden value within assets and digital property rights.
Furthermore, these technologies have the potential to increase access to non-financial assets, such as collectibles, memberships, and subscriptions, potentially creating new asset classes and markets.
Johnson’s forward-thinking approach to the future of digital assets and blockchain technology showcases her optimism for the industry’s growth and potential.