The value chain

As with AI, value is spread across a chain of several layers, and France's position here is, notably, much better than in AI.

Proof of work relies on specialised chips (ASICs), a market dominated by the Chinese manufacturers Bitmain and MicroBT. Mining has industrialised: listed US companies (Marathon, Riot, CleanSpark), mining pools (Foundry, AntPool). Since the Chinese ban of 2021, the United States has concentrated the largest share of the global hashrate. Energy is the raw material: miners set up near the cheapest sources (hydroelectricity, flared gas, nuclear surpluses).

The heart of the infrastructure: Bitcoin (store of value, ~$1.3 trillion market capitalisation), Ethereum (the smart contract platform, ~$230bn), Solana (performance), and layer 2s (Arbitrum, Base…). French position: Tezos, a blockchain of French origin (developed notably by Nomadic Labs), and Massa.

Institutional custody (Coinbase Custody, BitGo, Zodia), wallets (Ledger, the world leader in hardware, which aims for a New York Stock Exchange listing in 2026 at a valuation above $4bn), oracles (Chainlink), data and compliance (Chainalysis, TRM; the French company Kaiko), institutional staking (the French company Kiln), market making (the French company Flowdesk).

Platforms (Binance, Coinbase, Kraken) are the toll booths of the ecosystem and capture a major share of revenue. They are now joined by payment ramps: Stripe bought the stablecoin company Bridge for ~$1.1bn, and Visa and Mastercard are integrating stablecoin settlements.

A layer that has become geopolitical. Tether (USDT) is one of the most profitable companies in the world relative to its headcount (more than $13bn in reported profits in 2024, largely invested in US Treasury bills). Circle (USDC) has been listed since 2025. In Europe: SG-FORGE (Société Générale) with EURCV, and the banking consortium Qivalis (ING, UniCredit, CaixaBank…) for a MiCA-compliant euro stablecoin.

BlackRock (the IBIT ETF; the tokenised money market fund BUIDL), Fidelity, Franklin Templeton: the world's largest asset managers have become direct players in tokenisation. Companies are also building bitcoin treasuries (Strategy, formerly MicroStrategy, holds more than 600,000).

DeFi (Morpho, Aave, Uniswap), games and NFTs (Sorare, The Sandbox), certification and identity, asset tokenisation, tax compliance (the French company Waltio). As with AI, this is the layer where the most entrepreneurial opportunities arise.