The management company Franklin Templeton has filed an application to launch two exchange-traded funds (ETFs) that automatically reinvest stock dividends into bitcoin (BTC). According to the documents, the funds may start operating as soon as September 1, 2026.

They are the Franklin US Equity Bitcoin DRIP Index ETF and the Franklin US Innovation Bitcoin DRIP Index ETF. The abbreviation DRIP refers to dividend reinvestment plans, which are usually used to build up a position in stocks, but this time the mechanism is reconfigured to accumulate bitcoin.

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How the new funds are arranged

The funds will track the VettaFi US Large-Cap 500 Bitcoin DRIP index and a related innovation variant. By design, dividends from the stocks in the fund will be systematically invested not back into the shares, but into BTC. The funds will gain exposure to bitcoin through exchange-traded products on the main cryptocurrency, futures, options and other instruments.

At the start the index allocates 95% of funds to large US stocks and 5% to bitcoin. During quarterly rebalancing the BTC share above 5% will be cut to 4.5%, while between rebalancings the range allows an overall ceiling of 20%.

As of April 30 the base stock index included about 498 securities with capitalization ranging from $7.5 billion to $4.9 trillion. Thus the funds give the investor a broad basket of US stocks, while building a growing bitcoin share from the dividend stream.

Part of a broader crypto strategy

The filing was the latest step in the development of Franklin Templeton's crypto direction. The spot bitcoin ETF (EZBC) holds $358.9 million in net assets and attracted $329.6 million of cumulative inflows.

In May Franklin Templeton entered into a partnership with Payward, the parent company of the Kraken crypto exchange, to seek new ways of tokenizing traditional investment products. Tokenization is the issuance of digital analogs of real assets on a blockchain.

Источник: BeInCrypto