Franklin Templeton Clears Final Hurdle For ETFs That Turn Stock Dividends Into Bitcoin

Franklin Templeton has taken the last regulatory step before launching two exchange-traded funds that convert stock dividends into bitcoin. 

On October 22, Franklin Templeton filed a Form 8-A with the Securities and Exchange Commission to register shares of the Franklin US Equity Bitcoin DRIP Index ETF and the Franklin US Innovation Bitcoin DRIP Index ETF for trading on the Nasdaq. A prospectus filed the same day lists an effective date of October 27.

The filings for both funds arrived in June without tickers or fees. Four months later, the details are in.

How the funds work

The Equity fund, ticker FBEQ, tracks the VettaFi US Large-Cap 500 Bitcoin DRIP Index. The index holds the 500 largest U.S. companies by market capitalization, weighted by float-adjusted market cap. 

As of September 30, it held 499 stocks ranging from $10.2 billion to $5.5 trillion in size, with a concentration in information technology.

At inception, the index allocates 95% to those stocks and 5% to bitcoin. Each dividend the companies pay, regular or special, is reinvested into bitcoin at the market open on the day after the ex-date. The bitcoin share of the portfolio grows with each payment.

A traditional dividend reinvestment plan, or DRIP, buys more shares of the company that paid the dividend. Franklin’s version routes that cash into bitcoin.