Simply put
- Franklin Templeton filed with the SEC on Thursday for two ETFs that would hold a basket of U.S. stocks and direct dividends to Bitcoin.
- The fund tracks VettaFi’s new “Bitcoin DRIP” index, which starts with a 5% Bitcoin weighting and caps at 20%.
- The filing makes the 2026 pipeline even busier, with analysts expecting more than 100 crypto ETFs to be launched this year.
Global asset manager Franklin Templeton filed on Thursday with the Securities and Exchange Commission to launch two exchange-traded funds that will reinvest dividends. Bitcoin.
The Franklin US Stock Bitcoin DRIP Index ETF and the Franklin US Innovation Bitcoin DRIP Index ETF each hold a basket of US stocks, one including the VettaFi US Large Cap 500 Index and the other the VettaFi US Innovation 100 Index. The company then systematically reinvests the dividends it pays back into Bitcoin, rather than putting them back into stock.
The fund’s name, DRIP, is a nod to the dividend reinvestment plan, long used to compound stock holdings, and here repurposed to accumulate Bitcoin. According to the filing, each underlying index will start with a weighting of 5% Bitcoin and 95% stocks, with Bitcoin exposure capped at 20% and reduced with quarterly rebalancing.
The Fund will gain exposure through crypto exchange-traded products, including Bitcoin ETPs sponsored by affiliates of Franklin Templeton, as well as options and futures, and in some cases through wholly-owned subsidiaries in the Cayman Islands. VettaFi manages the index.
The submission is preliminary. No fees have been listed yet, and the funds could go into effect in about 75 days, with a possible launch in early September, according to the rules used by Mr. Franklin.
The funds will join a flurry of crypto ETF launches. After the SEC published general listing standards for crypto-linked funds in late 2025, issuers rushed to bring their products to market. Bitwise predicts that more than 100 such ETFs could be launched in 2026. bloomberg The Intelligencer’s James Seifert counted that there were well over 100 applications in the pipeline at the end of last year, with issuers “throwing a lot of product against the wall.”
Much of that wave is moving beyond simple spot exposure, dominated by BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust with tens of billions of dollars in assets, to funds that compete on structure and yield. Issuers are rolling out covered call income products like BlackRock’s newly launched iShares Bitcoin Premium Income ETF alongside other structured wrappers, and Franklin’s Bitcoin dividend design is the latest variation on this theme.
The ETF filing expands on Franklin Templeton’s active efforts in digital assets. The company runs its own Spot Bitcoin ETF, launched a dedicated Franklin Crypto division this year through the acquisition of Coinfund spinoff 250 Digital, and entered into a tokenization partnership with Kraken’s parent company PayWord. The company’s BENJI tokenized money market fund currently operates on multiple blockchains.
