The Princess of TradFi Quietly Built an $800 Million On-Chain Empire — But She’s No Match for the Knight of Late Capitalism | by Chip Mahoney | The Capital | Jul, 2025

While everyone is hypnotised by Bitcoin ETFs and halving cycles, Jenny Johnson — the Princess of TradFi — has been busy building a blockchain empire right under your nose.

But let’s get the story straight. Jenny didn’t build Franklin Templeton from scratch. She inherited the kingdom from her father, Charles Johnson, who forged Franklin into a Wall Street powerhouse over decades. When Charles stepped aside, Jenny stepped up — determined not to let the old fortress crumble in the coming digital wave.

In 2021, she launched FOBXX, the first tokenised U.S. money market fund. Nearly $800 million now moves across Ethereum, Arbitrum, Base, and Stellar, with real-time yield accrual and near-instant settlement. It’s what DeFi always promised, but scaled by the legacy behemoths.

FOBXX is built for institutions — the corporate treasuries who can’t wait three days for money to settle or leave millions frozen in a collateral pit while batch files get reconciled overnight. Jenny saw it coming, and moved first in TradFi to rebuild the rails.

But here’s the truth: even the Princess of TradFi is no match for the Knight of Late Capitalism.