The reality is I was kind of wrong on that belief. The reality is that it's going to be much more integrated than we actually expected. We've actually gotten now to a place for a number of different reasons. Yes, regulation part of it where a number of tradfi institutions are saying like, hey, actually we do see how we can now integrate these into our systems and we're going to kind of move through this place for a long period of time now where leveraging more and more crypto tech. And there's a number of people out there paying with a credit card. They don't even realize that the settlement on the back end is happening with stable coins. They just have a normal credit card as far as they understand. And so that's something that is the case. That's happening with a number of different card issuers. Much the same this is going to be true for individuals investing, earning yield and a number of different things where the plumbing is being updated with this new technology and individuals don't even realize.
So, we're very excited to announce today a partnership between Franklin Templeton and Kraken. We are going to be doing several things together to really advance the development of the digital asset space. And I'm going to let Dave talk about a little bit about the specifics of what we're doing. And then we're happy to answer some questions on it because we've been working on this for a while. And we are very excited about Kraken as our partner in this venture.
Yeah, sure. Happy to. So, a couple different things we're doing announcing today. There should be a press release they tell me that's hitting the wire right now. So, it really all about tokenization. So, first and foremost, Franklin Templeton is at Benji. It's been out there for a little while now. Adoption is actually starting to really take off meaningfully. So kind of across the board with other partners even beyond Payward at this point in time we're integrating Benji in a number of different fronts for our customers starting across geographies and we're going to look to really grow that. The second piece is in some ways maybe even more interesting. One of our kind of product portfolio things that we added to the product portfolio just this past year was X stocks. X stocks now are the most widely adopted tokenized equities, public equities out there. And so we have 30 billion plus in total trade volume since launch. Total AUM is getting close to about a half billion right now and we have roughly about a 100 different stocks and ETFs on tokenized equities. We are going to accelerate and move a number of different Franklin Templeton ETFs to tokenize those ETFs on the X stocks platform and then further kind of distribute those out to many of our customers as well. And so a couple two different pieces both on tokenization both will be integrated to the Kraken family of products and really looking forward to it.
Yeah.
Great. Thank you. Dave, one of the things that's that would be interesting to hear is why Franklin Templeton. So what does Franklin Templeton come bring to the table that Kraken couldn't have otherwise built itself?
Yeah. Well, there's I mean I guess there's probably worthwhile to take a little bit of a step back on just you know crypto and tradfi frankly. And so a few of the things that are happening right now are many trad companies as you guys have probably seen are looking to integrate you know crypto, Bitcoin, Ethereum into their offerings, offer their customers the ability to buy and sell. These are like you know big banks and brokers and so forth. On the other side of the coin, crypto companies are starting to integrate various different tradfi offerings. Payward is probably number one in that dimension. We did a big acquisition in Ninja Trader. We're actually a broker dealer. We offer just traditional investing trading and equities. On top of that, I just described, you know, X stocks. So, both of these different, you know, kind of camps are looking to integrate the other products. But the most interesting thing I think that's happening is crypto is now powering tradfi products. I mean the first most significant example of this are stable coins, right? This is where we have, you know, massive adoption, massive use cases so forth with stable coins that have been around for a long time. But it doesn't end there. Stable coins really aren't more anything more than, you know, a tokenized dollar, right? And so it clearly makes sense in many different ways to take all those benefits of better, faster, cheaper, money movement, holding, security, all those various different things and apply them to other asset classes.
Getting to Franklin Templeton, when we think about other asset classes, 1.7 trillion plus across their entire family of products is just one of the most strongest and most well-known asset managers out there. We have a significant customer base across consumers, individual professional traders, high net worth individuals, institutions as well. And so many of them are interested in getting access to more asset classes. Hence our expansion and high quality assets and therefore Franklin Templeton becomes like a key piece of that.
And if I can add, you know, in terms of what we find so appealing about Kraken is that we are looking as the only asset manager who is issuing digitally native product. Right? The products that we are issuing are solely existing on chain. There are no off-chain systems. There are no off-chain records. Right? We are operating solely as a digital native. And we want to really work with the amazing customer base that Kraken has been able to draw with its variety of services because this is a whole new audience, right? They have a different demand. They want different products. And this is where we're bringing our expertises together to design products specifically for this audience, right? We're starting with products that already exist where we know there's existing demand. But to me, one of the most exciting things about the partnership with Kraken is that we're collaboratively designing product for specifically this wallet-based audience that wants to operate as a digital native and be able to use every asset that they possess to the utmost ability of getting fees, additional fees, additional interest, additional spread off of that asset. And that is really something that you need a digitally native product to be able to realize the benefits of. And so I think this is a great blending of skill sets and access and expertise that is really going to result in something very special and very new for the industry.
Great. Thank you. Sandy, one of the things that you have said is that tokenization will do for ETFs what ETFs did for mutual funds. Can you talk to us about that thesis and where Kraken fits into that?
Sure. So let's start with ETFs and mutual funds, right? Because you need to understand what has happened there to really get a sense of what I mean by that. And ETFs came out in about the late 90s, early 2000s. They started to get traction and it was really after the global financial crisis in 2008 2009 that we started to see an actual shift in investor preference to ETF products, right? ETF products are both actively managed and passively managed, it's a wrapper. But what is important to understand is that ETF assets under management have now exceeded mutual fund assets under management in the US which is the largest market in the world for investing and that has happened in less than 20 years, right? In less than 20 years we have had a shift from a 100% mutual fund marketplace to now ETFs being the majority of assets in the industry. It has been a huge displacement of the existing product set. So when I say tokenization is going to do to ETFs what ETFs did to active funds and to mutual funds. What we mean is that tokenization represents such a significant enhancement in the way that the wrapper of the assets works that it is inevitably going to replace ETFs which were a significant enhancement of the way the wrapper works to mutual funds. And the most exciting thing about tokenization is every wrapper we have had on investment products for the last hundred years has been a dumb wrapper, right? It's just a wrapper. It's a bookkeeping structure. Tokenization represents a smart wrapper. You can program the token to take actions with the assets that are embedded in the token. And so in essence, by putting an asset inside of a token, you are creating a piece of software. And by making our investment products their own pieces of software, we add so much utility and so much we take away so much operational friction in how they can move that every one of us is going to benefit by being able to do things with our assets that are impossible to do today. Because the administrative burdens of actually taking those actions are so high. So it's going to create this velocity and this ease of transfer in the system that is going to make every asset we own work better for us.
Great. Dave, the institutional side to this is interesting. What are your clients telling you that they want to see from this partnership? And how does it change Kraken's institutional offering?
