$1.5 Trillion Wall Street Firm Used BritishHodl's Bitcoin Course to Train New Hires for Digital Assets Division

New York– Franklin Templeton, one of the largest asset management firms with over $1.5 trillion in assets under management, outsourced training and education of new hires for its digital assets division to a YouTube streamer and active X user named Minesh Bhindi. Bhindi who is better known by his online moniker, British Hodl, was contracted by the firm to develop a custom training course for over two dozen new hires who will work on the firm's Bitcoin related products.

Franklin Templeton confirmed these reports but clarified that the firms relationship with Bhindi has since been terminated. The firm added that the education product was less than satisfactory and they will be working with a new consultant to train new hires moving forward. The firm declined to comment on specifics but a recent post from their main account on X was ratio'd by users after it made a controversial statement regarding Ordinals and Bitcoin's security budget which prompted sleuths and autistic investigators to look more deeply into the firms training program.

An employee from Franklin Templeton's digital asset division, who wished to remain anonymous, told the Bugle that the firm reached out to Bhindi after he solicited his services as being tailored to individuals and businesses with a net worth over $500,000, a value which Franklin Templeton comfortably exceeds. "We wanted to work with someone who understood the unique requirements of a powerful Wall Street firm like Franklin Templeton. 'Stacking sats' and 'smash buying' $100 at a time is child's play. We needed our employees to understand Bitcoin from a wealthy person's perspective since that's the type of people our customers are."

The firm's source said employees figured out pretty quickly that hiring Bhindi was a mistake. "He would ask personal questions that struck everyone us unprofessional during conference calls over Zoom. He would private message people and ask them to follow him on X, subscribe and like his personal YouTube videos, and he even told one female employee that he was thinking about visiting New York and asked her if she'd show him around, if he came."

When Bhindi was focused on the curriculum he developed it was reportedly very basic and low signal. The first assignment was to read the Bitcoin White Paper and the subsequent quiz was a single multiple choice question which asked, "What does UTXO stand for?" If you think that's strange, it gets worse because the correct answer according to the quiz software was actually incorrect. "It was surreal" the source said.

Although Franklin Templeton nor the source The Bugle interviewed were able to share specific numbers, the employee said the cost per student was 5 figures. "I wouldn't pay $21 for that course" the source remarked. Its a good reminder that the Bitcoin space is filled with grifters and even respected firms aren't immune to falling for scams.