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Jenny Johnson, CEO of Franklin Templeton, has sounded the alarm on traditional finance's underestimation of Bitcoin's scale. In a conversation at the Wyoming Blockchain Symposium in Jackson Hole on Tuesday, Johnson noted that Bitcoin processed a staggering $36.6 trillion in transactions last year, dwarfing the combined volume of payment giants Mastercard and Visa.
This stark comparison underscores the growing importance of Bitcoin as a global financial network. Despite its reputation as a speculative asset, Bitcoin's underlying technology, blockchain, offers a secure and efficient way to transfer value.
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Johnson's comments come as a wake-up call for traditional financial institutions, many of which have been slow to embrace digital assets. While companies like Mastercard and Visa have made strides in integrating cryptocurrency payments, they still lag behind Bitcoin in terms of transaction volume and network reach.
Asset management giant Franklin Templeton, under Johnson's leadership, has been at the forefront of traditional finance's exploration of digital assets. The company has launched several Bitcoin-related products, including a blockchain-based money market fund and a proposed exchange-traded fund.
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More recently, the firm filed a proposal with the US Securities and Exchange Commision for an ETF, the Franklin Crypto Index ETF (EZPZ), which would hold an unspecified amount of Bitcoin and Ether, weighted by the assets' market capitalizations.
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