How the World's Largest Asset Managers Use Ethereum
Ethereum Korea One: Genesis · Day 1 · 2026-09-28 · 17:34 · In English
How are the world's largest asset managers actually using Ethereum? At Ethereum Korea One: Genesis, Franklin Templeton, BlackRock, and Ethereum Institutional discuss the state of institutional adoption beyond the headlines.
Speakers
- Chetan Karkhanis, Senior Vice President, Franklin Templeton
- Matthew Dawson, Co-Founder, Ethereum Institutional
- Andy Ng, Head of iShares Equity Product Strategy, BlackRock
- Jaehyun Park, Passive Sales Dept. 1, Equity Derivatives Trader (Market Maker), KB Securities (moderator)
About this session
Moderated by Jaehyun Park of KB Securities, this panel covers what institutional adoption really means, how blockchains are chosen, what tokenization makes possible beyond operational efficiency, and what barriers remain. You will hear practical perspectives from global institutions that run tokenized MMFs and Ethereum ETFs.
Key takeaways
- Drawing on Franklin Templeton's 2019 launch of BENJI, the first tokenized MMF in the US, Chetan Karkhanis (Franklin Templeton) explained that for the same product, retail users value lower costs, while corporate treasuries, high-frequency traders, and hedge funds value intraday yield, collateral use, and 24/7 fund movement.
- Franklin Templeton is connected to 11 chains, and Karkhanis said chain selection ultimately depends on the use case and on "where the client wants to own the asset." The breakdown: Solana for speed, Stellar (its base chain) for cost efficiency, and Ethereum for institutional adoption that requires security and governance.
- Andy Ng (BlackRock) said BlackRock is bridging TradFi and DeFi in both directions through BUIDL and ETHA, its Ethereum ETF. Sovereign wealth funds and pension funds reach Ethereum through the ETF with institutional-grade custody, and in Asia Pacific, hedge funds and others use it for arbitrage between the ETF and the underlying coin.
- Matthew Dawson (Ethereum Institutional) defined institutional adoption as "credibility, seriousness," pointing to the collaboration between BlackRock and Securitize and about 14 new funds with BNY and JPMorgan, all on Ethereum, as evidence that the partners themselves have become institutional grade.
- The panel agreed that tokenization is more than lower transfer agent costs. Chetan Karkhanis cited cutting the BENJI transaction unit to around $20 (versus typical fund minimums of $1,000 to $5,000), fund movement possible even on Sundays, movement between stablecoins and tokenized products, and programmable daily interest payments. Andy Ng expects wider access for investors in emerging markets such as India and Brazil.
- Matthew Dawson noted that if regulation is largely resolved, the next barriers are legacy system integration and workflows, and that privacy is also a key challenge. Asked about three years out, Chetan Karkhanis named full onchain tokenization of underlying securities "a game changer," and Matthew Dawson said that as adoption grows, the guarantees Ethereum and L2s provide will become clearer.
Chapters
- Opening and panel introductions
- What is institutional adoption? Franklin Templeton
- BlackRock: ETFs bridging TradFi and DeFi
- Ethereum Institutional: credibility and seriousness
- Chain selection: where the client wants to own the asset
- Is tokenization a distribution innovation or a fundamental shift?
- Opportunities beyond operational efficiency
- Remaining challenges: legacy integration and privacy
- Underrated use cases three years from now
- Closing