Napoleon AM, a French asset management firm that’s part of the financial services group Napoleon Group, has launched a new fund tied to the Chicago Mercantile Exchange’s (CME) cash-settled bitcoin futures.
According to CoinDesk, the “Napoleon Bitcoin Fund” started trading on December 6, and requires professional investors to buy-in at least €100,000 ($110,000) to invest in it, according to its prospectus. The fund requires investors to reside in France, and cannot be traded cross-border.
The Napoleon Bitcoin Fund is notably one of the first funds to use CME’s cash-settled bitcoin futures contracts, and allows investors to gain exposure to bitcoin without requiring them to actually manage any BTC.
Napoleon AM reportedly became a licensed “Alternative Investment Fund Manager” in May of this year, and trades CME bitcoin futures. Bakkt, the Intercontinental Exchange’s crypto venture, has recently launched its own cash-settled bitcoin futures in Singapore, which the fund is open to tapping into.
Stéphane Ifrah, Napoleon AM’s president, said in a press release:
We are proud to contribute to the institutionalization and democratization of digital assets through a unique regulated fund under French law.
As CryptoGlobe reported, France’s central bank is set to test a digital currency in the first quarter of next year, according to governor Francois Villeroy de Galhau. The country has been slowly accepting cryptocurrencies, although it has urged the G7 to form a task force to deal with Facebook’s Libra.
Featured image via Unsplash.
