We tend to see the public sphere as a rather skeptical universe on cryptos and Web3, even hostile. But this is partly untrue, especially on the side of Bpifrance, which has been funding a large part of the ecosystem for years and has just won the best investor of the year award.

Whether it's Ledger, Sorare, Kaiko or even the start-up Acinq (specialized in scaling bitcoin), all these nuggets have benefited from the support of the public investment bank at some point in their history. More recently, DFNS (an MPC specialist) or Narval (a security overlay for digital asset management) have also benefited.

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"This award is the recognition of a global and patient construction work started in 2018 within Bpifrance and carried out in a decentralized way by all business lines and with top management, often under the media radar," says Yoann Caujolle, managing director at Bpifrance.

The bank is currently one of the first European institutional players to finance business models using blockchain. "We strongly believe in the disruptive power of this technology, the challenge is to position the French ecosystem at the forefront of this new technological cycle in order to attract the best projects, the best talents and to promote the creation of value in France," he continues.

Bpifrance's strategy meets three strategic commitments: financing the ecosystem, supporting it beyond the strictly financial aspect, and then testing and implementing the technology internally. Each of these options can be adapted according to usage and market conditions...

"It is crucial to have a strategy but you have to remain agile, Web3 remains a decentralized and non-linear function," explains Yvan de Lastours, blockchain lead for Bpifrance.

The institution's participation can take different forms: loans, grants, innovation competitions, equity investments, investments in funds and even investments in tokens recently.For the latter type of operations, Bpifrance goes through its fund of funds activity. To date, it has subscribed to six specialized investment funds, all active in France and capable of investing in both equity and crypto-assets. A seventh is expected to be launched soon in 2023...

For projects selected directly by Bpifrance, the criteria can vary depending on the stage of financing. "Between an initial grant and an investment of several million euros, they are not the same," says Ivan de Lastours. "But there are two elements that always come up: expertise in the sector and the professionalism of the teams.

As for the purpose, it is never speculative. "Our mandate consists exclusively of looking for companies or investment funds that are working on the long term to build the products and services of tomorrow's blockchain economy. This is an important filter in the universe of possibilities", says Yoann Caujolle.

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