The Blockchain Group from Paris Wants to Own One Percent of All Bitcoins

With The Blockchain Group, a European company is finally stepping up to compete with MicroStrategy. The Paris-based company plans to own one percent of all Bitcoins over the next eight years—positioning itself to become Europe’s largest Bitcoin treasury.

In a world governed by stubbornness, reinvention is refreshing. Originally, the French startup The Blockchain Group (ALTBG) was one of those companies that tried to do “something with blockchain.”

With “Eniblock,” ALTBG launched a platform for NFTs (non-fungible tokens) that initially targeted the healthcare sector, then shifted focus to enterprises, insurance companies, and eventually the aviation industry. It collaborated with metaverse companies, integrated DeFi (decentralized finance), migrated to Polygon, and used Hyperledger Fabric, Tezos, and more. Everything pointed to a typical blockchain and Web3 startup uncertain of its own direction—dabbling here and there in search of footing.

Finally, in November 2024, Vice-CEO Alexandre Laizet announced a strategic pivot. By then a publicly traded company, the startup emulated what MicroStrategy had pioneered: it transformed itself into a “Bitcoin treasury company” by accumulating Bitcoin and thus shoring up its stock price. Previously, the stock had fallen from a high of 2 euros at the end of 2020 to a low of 10 cents, but recovered swiftly after the announcement and now sits at 1.14 euros.

One could say Bitcoin has found its “killer app”—not as a payment medium, but as an instrument to lift depressed share prices out of the doldrums.

ALTBG share price according to onvista.de

In an interim report, The Blockchain Group has now outlined its strategy—and its goals.

BTC Yield and BTC Gain

As “Europe’s first Bitcoin Treasury Company,” traded under the ticker symbol ALTBG on the Paris Stock Exchange, the firm is closely modeling itself after the standards set by MicroStrategy. Like its American counterpart, it employs metrics such as “BTC Yield” as a key indicator to assess its strategy.

As with MicroStrategy, “BTC Yield” refers to the growth of Bitcoin per share. The promise made to investors is not only to track Bitcoin’s price performance but also to back each share with an increasing amount of Bitcoin. Another key performance indicator is the “BTC Gain,” measuring the growth of bitcoins in the company’s treasury, as well as the “BTC € Gain,” which simply expresses the same value adjusted for the Bitcoin price in euros.

BTC Yield of ALTBG

Since the start of its bitcoin-focused strategy, ALTBG has multiplied its BTC Yield. The fourth quarter of 2024 saw a BTC Yield of 141.2 percent, meaning each share was backed by 41 Satoshis (the smallest unit of Bitcoin). By the end of the first quarter of 2025, BTC Yield had jumped to 709.8 percent, with each share now backed by 332 Satoshis. For the company’s balance sheet, the bitcoin-focused strategy is positive, though somewhat less dramatic than the narrative might suggest—assets on the balance sheet have increased by about one percent since the end of 2023.

In addition to its role as a Bitcoin treasury, the company pursues several other lines of business. Through “Trimane,” it collects and utilizes data for AI transformation; with iORGA, it develops digital applications; and with Metadev.3, it offers decentralized software development, with a focus on blockchain technologies. Nevertheless, the company calls its Bitcoin strategy a “turning point in its own history”; the other business areas are increasingly being shifted to the background.

Goals of The Blockchain Group

The company plans to utilize various financial instruments to maximize its BTC Yield. At a general assembly in February, it resolved to raise 300 million euros, and in early March, it issued its first convertible bonds to the tune of 48.6 million euros. In addition, the company intends to use private bonds or issue more shares. So far, it has succeeded in increasing its Bitcoin holdings from 156 to 620 BTC.

But the company’s ambitions go far beyond that. It plans to acquire around one percent of all bitcoins in existence over the next eight years. To achieve this, it aims to raise up to 100 billion dollars in capital—enough to hold up to 260,000 bitcoins.