BNP Paribas adds six Bitcoin, Ether ETNs for retail clients in France

French banking giant BNP Paribas just dropped the mic — they're rolling out SIX crypto-linked ETNs for retail clients in France. Starting Monday, you can get Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH) exposure through regulated products via standard securities accounts. This isn't just for the whales — it's open to individual investors, entrepreneurs, private banking clients, and users of their digital platform Hello bank!. And they're hinting this might expand to wealth management clients outside France later. 🚀

Quick explainer: ETNs let you track crypto performance without actually holding the assets. They come with credit risk (if the bank fails, you're cooked), no tracking error, and some tax advantages. Basically, it's crypto exposure with a traditional finance wrapper.

This isn't BNP's first rodeo in digital assets. In 2024, they arranged and placed Slovenia's first digital sovereign bond — the EU's debut blockchain-based government bond. Then in September last year, BNP Paribas and HSBC joined the Canton Foundation, which governs the Canton Network (a blockchain focused on institutional finance and real-world asset tokenization).

Before that, BNP Paribas backed Digital Asset's $135 million funding round alongside Goldman Sachs, Citadel, and other big players. Digital Asset is the firm behind Canton. And just last month, BNP Paribas Asset Management launched a tokenized share class of a money market fund on the Ethereum blockchain — expanding their fund tokenization push using public infrastructure (building on an earlier private blockchain issuance in Luxembourg).

The crypto ETN wave is spreading across Europe. ING Germany recently added new products from Bitwise and VanEck to its investment offering. And in a major reversal, crypto ETNs returned to the UK retail market in October 2025 after the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) lifted a ban that had been in place since 2021.

Related reads: Trading 212 let UK retail trade crypto ETNs without FCA approval (according to FT), and Germany's central bank president is touting stablecoin and CBDC benefits for the EU.