Visitor Background
Chetan Karkhanis currently serves as Senior Vice President at Franklin Templeton. His investment career began in the 1990s with investments in the TMT (telecommunications, media, and technology) sector and the dot-com bubble burst. He has also held senior positions at other globally renowned asset management firms such as JP Morgan and Morgan Stanley. Currently, Chetan heads Franklin Templeton Strategic Ventures (FTSV) for the Asia Pacific region. His role extends beyond investor; he is the architect of this 76-year-old asset management firm's digital transformation in Asia.
Web3 needs to attract more traditional Wall Street players through education.
Alex from the Dynamic Zone: Franklin is hosting a "Change the Soch" event in India. Faced with the current extreme volatility in the crypto market, what kind of "therapy" does Wall Street need?
Chetan: We have an event in India called "Change the Soch." Although it was originally aimed at educating specific female investors, I believe that the concept of changing mindsets applies entirely to Web3. Web3 technologies like RWA and tokenization are still in their early stages, and traditional financial institutions need to join Web3 and change their mindset. This requires not therapy, but education and awareness-raising.
Will Web 3.0 experience a time like the dot-com bubble of the 1990s and 2000s?
Alex from Dongqu: You started your investment career in the late 1990s by researching the TMT industry, and you also experienced the entire dot-com bubble era. Do you think the current tokenization craze is history repeating itself?
Chetan: That's a good question. You've incorporated my experience from 25 years ago. Historically, we seem somewhat similar, but we're completely different.
The similarities are that the Web3 space did experience excessive hype, speculation, and the resulting price volatility. Another similarity is that prices were initially driven up by a small group, and as more individuals and institutions joined, increased liquidity also brought volatility. However, I believe this is quite different from the 2000 dot-com crash.
The bubble back then was in revenue—many companies received extremely high valuations even without revenue. The market had "over-invested" in the value the internet could offer at the time. It was the Web 1.0 era; e-commerce, mobile phones, and cloud computing were still immature. But as this infrastructure came into place, the arguments from back then proved correct, just premature.
I believe cryptocurrencies follow a similar parallel. The blockchain argument itself is not risky. Today's correction is simply a normal evolution in price discovery. As institutional activity may shift towards risk-off, we will eventually see a healthy return to "realism," guiding more institutions to utilize the true value of blockchain.
There are similarities, such as excessive hype and volatility. But the fundamentals are different. The bubble of 2000 was caused by many companies being overvalued with "zero revenue," reflecting the market's over-investment in the technological capabilities at the time. The fundamental thesis of blockchain is now solid. The current correction is simply a price discovery process; as institutions enter the market, we will see a healthier realism.
A $20 Democratization Experiment
Q: You partnered with DBS to lower the minimum investment for tokenized funds to $20. Is this cost-effective? Wouldn't the KYC costs alone exceed the profit?
Chetan: You're right, that's certainly a challenge. But lowering the threshold to $20 is to demonstrate the ability of blockchain to "democratize" investment. As for costs, that's a business issue that intermediaries need to address. But I believe that with advancements in AI and technology, KYC and operating costs will decrease significantly. We can't let costs become a barrier preventing the general public from entering the financial ecosystem.
Additional information: In its partnership with DBS, Franklin Templeton lowered the entry threshold for its tokenized money market fund to $20.
This would be almost suicidal in traditional financial logic—the compliance costs (KYC/AML) for a $20 customer far outweigh the profits. But he's betting on future technological dividends: with the collaboration of AI and blockchain, compliance costs will be compressed exponentially. This isn't about short-term balance sheets, but about seizing the power to set the standards for the next generation of financial infrastructure.
Chetan is driving the development of Franklin's tokenization platform, Benji. Franklin is not just a traditional asset manager, but also an innovator and technology enabler.
Alex from the Dynamic Zone: If we look five to ten years into the future, when people talk about Chetan and Franklin Templeton, would you rather they remember you for bringing the innovative product Benji, or for changing the culture of this established company? Which achievement is more difficult?
Chetan: I really enjoyed this interview; it was one of the most thought-provoking questions I've encountered in a long time. I tend to think these two options aren't mutually exclusive. If I can be known for raising significant assets for the company, promoting Benji and the message of tokenization, while simultaneously demonstrating that Franklin Templeton is not just a traditional management force, but an innovative, tech-savvy, and forward-thinking organization, I would call it a success. I don't believe the two are mutually exclusive.
Additional information: Benji is a proprietary blockchain technology platform developed by asset management giant Franklin Templeton. It is primarily used for issuing and managing tokenized financial assets and is a core tool for traditional finance (TradFi) transitioning to the Web3 space.
It currently supports: Stellar, Polygon, Arbitrum, Avalanche, Ethereum, Aptos, Base, Solana, and the latest BNB Chain, as well as institutional private chains: expanding to Canton for regulatory agencies.
In February of this year, a partnership was established with Binance to launch an institutional-grade OTC collateral program. Eligible institutional clients can use tokenized money market fund units issued on the Benji platform as collateral to trade on Binance, while the assets are securely held in a regulated custody environment (such as Ceffu), effectively reducing counterparty risk.
