French investment bank Bpifrance said it’s launching a €25 million (US$27 million) cryptocurrency venture strategy to invest directly in digital assets as part of a broader support strategy for the nascent sector.
The state-owned bank will use the funds to invest in startups where it’ll receive tokens, rather than equity, Bpifrance said in a statement Thursday. Investments will be targeted toward blockchain projects with “a strong French footprint,” the company said, covering areas such as decentralized finance, tokenization, staking and artificial intelligence.
Bpifrance has invested more than €150 million into blockchain projects and startups over the last decade, including stakes in market maker Flowdesk and technology firms Dfns and Arianee. It’s also backed a number of crypto funds. The bank began piloting token investments in 2022, it said, including a deal with decentralized finance lending platform Morpho.
Token investment rounds are common among venture capital and angel investors, but traditional firms and wealth funds have struggled to square their participation with regulatory requirements. While token deals are often more liquid thanks to crypto’s flourishing markets, they also pose a greater risk of volatility and failure.
Being able to make token investments became “much more urgent” in light of the US’s accelerating crypto strategy, Bpifrance Deputy CEO Arnaud Caudoux said, with France keen not to be left behind. President Donald Trump has made supporting the crypto sector a cornerstone policy of his administration.
“The new US policy is creating massive attractivity for all crypto companies from across the world,” Caudoux said at at press briefing. “We want to keep those companies here because we strongly believe that it’s very important in the future to have our own ecosystem.”
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Emily Nicolle, Bloomberg News
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