Bpifrance, one of France’s most powerful and influential state-backed institutions, announced Thursday plans to invest up to $27 million (€25 million) in lesser-known digital assets in an effort to “strengthen the French blockchain ecosystem.”
Bpifrance Unveils $27M Crypto Fund
France’s public investment bank Bpifrance will not establish a strategic Bitcoin reserve but will focus on accelerating its “digital asset investment strategy” by bolstering crypto startups with “a strong French footprint.”
Its target areas are decentralized finance (DeFi), physical networks, tokenization, staking, layer 1, 2, and 3 protocols, and artificial intelligence. According to the bank, the investment initiative represents a pioneering step among sovereign funds.
“By accelerating its token investment strategy, Bpifrance reaffirms its commitment and strengthens its support for the development of French digital asset economy players operating within the European regulatory framework,” said Arnaud Caudoux, Deputy CEO of Bpifrance.
The global blockchain ecosystem is “currently booming,” but French funds in the field remain very limited. French digital and AI minister Clara Chappaz said public and private financing was “one of the keys to the sustainable positioning of our ecosystem on the international stage.”
Bpifrance’s Caudoux then said the bank was convinced of the increasing importance that blockchain companies “will take on in the years to come and want to increase French competitiveness and presence in the digital assets field.”
Bpifrance To Back Early-Stage Crypto Tokens
The $27 million fund represents one of the first moves by a prominent state investment bank to buy open-market crypto tokens — a “pioneering initiative,” as Bpifrance phrased it.
Bpifrance will specifically target “smaller, newly-issued tokens” from French projects — assets that have yet to be listed on digital asset exchanges.
Notably, the bank is no stranger to the blockchain sector, having invested over 150 million euros ($162 million) over the past decade, even helping to fund the crypto hardware wallet maker Ledger in 2014.
“The US is really accelerating its own crypto strategy, so this is all the more important,” Caudoux stated at a press conference, as reported by Reuters. He added that Bpifrance began to support crypto before the US started its own pro-crypto strategies.
Since his return to the White House, Trump has promised to make America the “undisputed Bitcoin superpower” and pledged to make the nation the “crypto capital” of the planet.
The pro-crypto President’s government has also dropped SEC enforcement cases against crypto companies, including Kraken, Coinbase, Robinhood, and Ripple, attracting blockchain talent and funds to the U.S. at a time when Europe is a tad wary.
