🇫🇷 35,000 new millionaires in France in 2025, for an economic growth of only 0.9%.

This mismatch is not an anomaly—it says something important about how people get rich today.
The figure comes from UBS’s Global Wealth Report. The country now has about 2.39 million people whose net worth exceeds one million US dollars.
The reason for this increase is not related to GDP growth or wages, but to the valuation of the assets that households already own, or buy—mainly real estate and shares tied to financial markets.
People generally don’t become millionaires by earning more, but by using their salary to buy assets that gain value while you sleep. UBS’s economist sums it up like this: wealth grows mainly in countries that like the stock market.
France, moreover, still lags behind in this respect. Real estate weighs heavily there, and financial assets account for only 47% of households’ wealth, versus nearly 80% in the United States. The French remain attached to property and to low-risk saving.
That’s precisely what makes the topic interesting for anyone interested in digital assets. The core debate is not “should one buy Bitcoin,” but “how far are people willing to expose their savings to risk in order to make it grow?” Crypto sits at the extreme end of this spectrum, where the potential for appreciation and the risk of loss are highest.
So, does France’s culture of cautious saving protect households—or does it deprive them of the decade’s main source of getting rich?