BNP Paribas is launching six crypto-linked exchange-traded notes (ETNs) to give retail clients in France regulated exposure to Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH). The ETNs, each indexed to the spot prices of BTC and ETH, will be tradable from Monday through standard securities accounts and are targeted at individual investors, entrepreneurs, private-banking clients and users of the bank’s Hello bank! digital platform, with a potential later rollout to wealth-management clients outside France.
ETNs let investors track the performance of digital assets without directly holding cryptocurrencies. They remove custody and wallet-management responsibilities but carry the issuing bank’s credit risk: if BNP Paribas were to default, holders could lose principal. ETNs are designed to have no tracking error versus the reference price and may offer tax treatment advantages compared with direct crypto purchases, depending on investor circumstances.
The product expansion builds on BNP Paribas’s wider digital-asset strategy. In 2024 the bank arranged and placed Slovenia’s first digital sovereign bond, marked as the EU’s first blockchain-based government bond issuance. BNP Paribas and HSBC joined the Canton Foundation last year to support the Canton Network for institutional finance and real-world-asset tokenization. The bank also participated in Digital Asset’s $135 million funding round and recently launched a tokenized money-market fund share class on Ethereum, following an earlier private-blockchain issuance in Luxembourg.
Crypto ETNs are gaining traction across Europe: ING Germany has added new crypto products from Bitwise and VanEck, and UK retail crypto ETNs returned after the Financial Conduct Authority reversed its 2021 ban in October 2025.
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