Jennifer Johnson on blockchain efficiency
From Yat Siu & Jenny Johnson on TradFi-DeFi Convergence | WEF Accredited Programme 2026 · · Animoca Brands
“It cost us a $1.50 per transaction to do it on the old system. It cost us in total a $1.13 to run it on the Stellar blockchain. So, it shows you. And so, today, if you open our old money market fund, the minimum investment is $500 because anything below that, we're losing money... In the case of our Benji blockchain money market fund, we actually you can open an account with $20 and arguably we can go lower than that. So, if you think about financial inclusion, that is really significant.”
On , Jennifer Johnson, Chief Executive Officer & Director at Franklin Resources Inc, spoke about blockchain efficiency during Yat Siu & Jenny Johnson on TradFi-DeFi Convergence | WEF Accredited Programme 2026 on Animoca Brands.
About Jennifer Johnson
Jennifer Johnson, CEO of Franklin Templeton, has been a featured speaker at multiple conferences in early 2026 discussing the convergence of traditional finance and blockchain technology. At the Future of Digital Assets summit, she argued that blockchain is a "programming language" that provides a "source of truth" and reduces costs in financial services, citing her firm’s tokenized money market fund as an example where transaction costs dropped from about $130 to less than a dollar when run on the Stellar blockchain. She stated her belief that "the entire financial systems rails will be replaced by blockchain just because of the efficiency of it" and that all traditional securities will ultimately be tokenized. At the World Economic Forum in Davos, Johnson said she believes "2026 is the year where TradFi and DeFi start to have a convergence." Johnson also spoke about private market opportunities, describing secondary private equity and real estate debt as attractive areas given the need for liquidity. On the topic of artificial intelligence, Johnson told the FII Institute that "any business in any industry that isn't focused on trying to think about how they should leverage AI is going to become obsolete." She said Franklin Templeton is using AI to generate first drafts of client proposals in 15 minutes that previously took 15 to 18 hours, and is building an "intelligence hub" platform for its distribution teams. On an earnings call, she noted that the company is using a multi-agent orchestration approach with a partner called Wand, backed by venture firms including Thiel Capital. Johnson has also spoken about the importance of diverse investment teams, saying that women entrepreneurs receive only about 2% of venture capital despite having "twice the returns" on average, and that a lack of diversity can lead to missed investment opportunities.