etoro CEO: Our Customers Are Moving Away from Crypto

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1:22Hello and welcome back to the Big Boss Interview Podcast. I'm Will Bain. Great to have your company on the programme where we speak to some of the biggest names in business, shaping the way we live and work. Over the past couple of decades, investing has undergone a fundamental transformation. What was once the preserve of professional traders and financial institutions, now available to just about anybody who's got a smartphone and an internet connection. And one of the companies that's been at the forefront of that change has been eToro. Founded in 2007, the platform helped pioneer social investing, as they called it, allowing millions of users around the world not only to buy stocks, commodities and cryptocurrencies, but also to learn from and copy the strategies of other investors.

2:07Today, eToro is one of the most recognized names in digital investing, serving customers across dozens of countries and sitting at the intersection of traditional finance and that rapidly evolving world of crypto. But that position puts the company right at the heart of some of the biggest questions facing the financial services sector at the moment. Crypto, for example, has delivered extraordinary gains and also equally extraordinary crashes. Regulation continues to evolve and political figures are becoming increasingly involved too. Most notably, of course, President Trump, who's embraced digital assets in association with crypto, including his own meme coin, has sparked debate about the future direction of the market.

2:48So what does responsible investing look like in a world driven by online communities and social media hype? And as crypto moves further into the political mainstream, what opportunities and risks does that create for investors? It's all things that Sean has been chatting to the founder and chief exec of eToro, Yoni Asiyar.

3:13Thank you for your time. It's always a moment, whatever we're talking about, to be discussing investments and where people's money go. And I'm just quite interested, sort of seeing what Etoro and yourself have been talking about quite a lot lately, whether it's about payments or banking services and people being able to use artificial intelligence to get more information on investments. Are you moving away from crypto, do you think?

3:42Yoni Assia:No, I think that, again, we are big believers in crypto and the underlying technology of blockchain and digital assets. I have no doubt that we are going to see a huge shift within the next 10 to 15 years of$100 trillion to probably$400 trillion of assets moving on chain. And that is a part of eToro and a significant pillar of what we're building in eToro is that transformation to digital assets. But we are at the same time looking at this amazing opportunity to be able to accelerate our product roadmap with AI and develop more products across trading, across investing, savings with our successful ISA, cash ISA and stocks and shares ISAs here in the UK and globally.

4:33Yoni Assia:and entering into new banking with our Visa debit card and more banking services coming up into the Toro new app. It feels quite stark there because we hear a lot from regulators in the UK, those in the traditional banks, pension funds, those that are in charge of looking out for people's long-term financial future, saying we don't save and invest enough in this country for our futures, for our retirements. And the fact that a platform that is so invested in cryptocurrencies as you are is also looking to provide some of those other services, it's very starkly different, the aims of those, aren't they?

5:18Yoni Assia:Well, we have been big believers in capital markets, the vision of eToro that we framed almost 20 years ago of opening the global markets for everyone to trade and invest in a simple and transparent way. A big part of that is educating customers, educating retail investors how to invest and how to save in capital markets. And capital markets includes many types of assets, whether it's stocks, which is, by the way, by far the biggest asset class on eToro today, is actually stocks out of the$20 billion of assets under administration in eToro. It's about 50 % plus right now in global stocks, U.S.

6:02Yoni Assia:shares, as well as U.K. shares, European shares and 25 different stock markets across the globe. And we believe there are always new opportunities, whether coming through technology or whether it's opportunities that are new for our customers, sometimes opportunities like futures and options or crypto or smart portfolios that we're developing in eToro with AI to generate alpha to our customers. But a lot of these are financial terms used in the city of London or on Wall Street or from people who will have spent a lot of time looking at the world of investing. I just wonder if you are looking to go very mainstream and apply for a banking license in the UK, for example.

6:51Yoni Assia:Well, we are already mainstream with more than 40 million registered users to the platform and more than 4 million brokerage accounts in 75 different countries. And we are definitely, our belief is that investing is mainstream, should be mainstream, that retail investors should understand the risks, of course, and the benefits of compounding wealth in capital markets. And definitely as we progress and expand our app functionality from trading to investing now to neobanking, we're looking at also expanding capabilities across both product and licensing across the globe. Is there a danger in blurring the lines?

7:33Because if you go on your website, when you load it up, right at the top, there's a warning about the amount of money that people can lose by using those contract for differences, which can effectively be a bet on the movement of a price. Buy crypto, very specifically, you name crypto at the top of the front of your website. But if you go on traditional investment websites in the UK, they don't have that stuff because they're not drawing people more towards those riskier products.

8:05Yoni Assia:I believe in choice, you know, freedom, openness is a big part of what eToro believes in. I've seen a lot of opportunities across the year and there's always a relationship or a correlation between risk and reward. When customers don't want to take any risk and potentially invest in very, very low risk products, that also usually caps their ability to generate gains in the markets. I think capital markets represent an opportunity to find double digit returns across many money markets. If you just look at the S &P and Nasdaq returns over the past almost 20 years, since 2009, you're looking at double-digit returns in Nasdaq.

8:51Yoni Assia:You're talking about mid-teens. And I think definitely customers that want to invest in capital markets should be educated about the risks of capital markets. Risk is not a negative term. Risk is a part of the business of investing, a significant part of it. and when customers are more knowledgeable as they learn about the markets I always say a big part by the way of the rebranding process that we're doing this week which is really focused about AI is around the fact that people need to believe in capital markets that's sort of the first ethos of educated people to believe in capital markets.

9:30And that is a big it's a big debate in the UK right now about you know the levels of risk and whether they've been right for a long time or whether they've been wrong for a long time and people's money that they might have and the ability for us to afford people's pensions, whether that is all right. When you say you're going through a rebranding at the moment, why does eToro need to go through a rebranding?

9:52Yoni Assia:Well, you know, it's been almost 20 years since I founded eToro with my older brother with the same vision of opening the global markets for everyone to trade and invest in a simple and transparent way. I think our path of actually accelerating our product roadmap, putting AI in the front and center of what we deliver to our customers with Tori, our AI agents at the front of the new app. We've actually built the entire app in the last six months, launching this week from scratch with AI. So our coders are actually building with AI with 100 % of the code written by AI with many, many new features of AI and generally rolling up to customers.

10:36Yoni Assia:And with that transition of also expanding our product roadmap also through acquisitions, we recently acquired Zengo, a non-custodial wallet. We understood that the brand today... That's for holding cryptocurrencies. That's for holding non-custidial cryptocurrencies that, by the way, today also include tokenized equities that trade 24-7. We understood that the brand needs to be more flexible and actually represent all of the different product categories of Vitoro. There are so many out there, but have you got a battle on your hands to convince people that you're a safe place for longer term, steady returns?

11:15you've named some of those major global indexes and their returns of late. That wouldn't be, if you go on the eToro website, right at front and centre, it's talking about you've got to be wary that more than half of our customers will lose money when they're trading the product, the contract for differences. You're having to warn people straight off about the losses that can come with cryptocurrencies. That's not how, etoro hasn't been set up for those long-term steady investments, is it? You're built on people actively acting every day.

11:49Yoni Assia:Actually, if you look at the largest asset accumulation we've had this year so far, it's actually cash Isas. Is that because cryptocurrency prices have fallen so much? No, I think it's because over time we have built a very significant brand. We're managing$20 billion of customer assets across the globe. We're regulated across the globe. Many of our customers, by the way, joined us in their 20s or in their early 30s. They're now in their 40s amassing wealth. They already trust us and have parts of their trading and investing funds with us. And now they're expanding and want to see their savings with us as well.

12:31Yoni Assia:And I think, again, educating people around sophisticated and more complex product, which represent a very small part of the$20 billion. I think education is always a positive thing when you think of customers that actually want to learn more about capital markets. They want to explore different opportunities in capital markets. And when you look at the 5 ,000 pro investors on eToro, as you know, the unique part of eToro is you can actually see, follow and automatically copy investors from all around the world. And they join our pro investor program where we actually train them as professional wealth managers over time to get actually the certification of a wealth manager.

13:15That is different to day trading, which you have often talked about, and the ability to be able to just buy and sell every single day in and out of, well, it seems wrong to call them investments when they're over such a short period of time.

13:31Yoni Assia:So that's actually a minority of our customers. So that is definitely where we started 20 years ago. But over time, as you look at the vast majority of assets in eToro, they are deployed into investments such as copying the top investors on the platform, such as our smart portfolios. We have today 130 different smart portfolios managed by our chief investment office, who actually uses AI to find opportunities for our customers around thematic investments and partnerships with the likes of BlackRock and Franklin Templeton and Wisdom3 and others. Does that mean within that, when you look at the data of your customers, have your customers moved away from cryptocurrencies recently?

14:14Yoni Assia:Recently, they have definitely moved away from crypto, which is something that we've seen in every crypto cycle since 2013. As a reminder, we were founded in 2007, so pre-crypto, and we're successful as well. I think what we've seen in the last four cycles, so if you think of crypto, you have what people call the super cycles. 2013 all-time high, 2017 all-time high, 2021 all-time high, 2025 all-time high, then 2014 correction, 18 correction, 22 correction, 2026 correction. A reminder of the boom and bust of cryptocurrencies, isn't it? My thesis and my first degree in computer sciences was called the physics of booms and busts.

14:58Yoni Assia:I fell in love in capital markets during the dot-com boom and learned probably the most I've ever learned about capital markets during the dot-com bust. So it is a part of capital markets to see booms and busts, which is why education and understanding the risk is so important. If you want to invest in an asset that potentially has potential significant returns, by the way, tech stocks are very similar to that. A lot of people were conservative, even Warren Buffett in the past 20 years, relatively conservative before his big investment in Apple about investing in technology in high multiples versus value investing, for example.

15:40But there is a difference, isn't there, with cryptocurrencies? Well, one, it's pretty relatively new. And two, you know, you've just described a cycle of boom and bust where, you know, people over on regular occasions over the last decade or so could have lost a lot of money at any point. Sure.

15:58Yoni Assia:But when I met Buffett for the famous crypto Buffett lunch and came there to try and convince him about crypto, I actually came out of that lunch with sort of an aha moment that stocks are actually superior and will stay here. whether the currency of the future in 50 years in Mars is going to be Bitcoin, dollar or pound, McDonald's and Coca-Cola might be still selling nuggets and Coke. And I do think that capital markets are amazing. Generally, I think crypto is a part of that. But when you look at the large scale, you have stocks, you have bonds, you have different types of products and really the ability for you to go into eToro and find similar-minded people and extremely smart people who are actually trading all of these different assets from stocks in Australia to stocks in Japan to crypto assets like Bitcoin, which is, in my view, digital gold, to other crypto assets, which I'm potentially less familiar with.

17:02So you don't think just on Bitcoin out of interest? You know, the big thing that has changed since Bitcoin was created, and we've seen it in recent weeks and months, the advancements of AI and cyber security is almost the main industry that's being shaken up by the very fast advancements in AI. Do you now think there is a threat to Bitcoin that didn't exist before?

17:28Yoni Assia:I think specifically to Bitcoin, that threat is not that significant, because the logic of Bitcoin, even beyond its technology, first of all, there are already quantum resistant plays that are going into Bitcoin. But more than that, if you think of the structure, it's a transparent blockchain, where everybody has their own private keys to access their transparent blockchain, or they invest through companies. Private for now, I guess, is the point that many might think with the advancements of the technology. But the logic, and I'll tell you a story that I was invested in Bitcoin, I think it was 2014 or 13, when they found a bug, I got alarmed, I actually withdrew it.

18:10Yoni Assia:like sold some of my Bitcoin, that was a mistake. I think because the structure is so clear where people actually know their public and private addresses, and you have 21 million Bitcoin, and everybody understands how the halving works and how the blockchain works. I think that even if something happens in quantum, the community will actually find the right solution for Bitcoin to continue post-quantum computing. Can I ask you, probably the biggest cryptocurrency headline of recent weeks has been the profits made by Donald Trump and his family over recent years, particularly linked to a coin, a Trump coin that was launched.

18:53And when you look at the numbers of the amount that people who bought that coin potentially, well, did end up losing, mounting into the billions and billions of dollars, There's nearly a million people, the New York Times report, that bought President Trump's meme coin, lost money through to the end of June, the month just gone. And yet Donald Trump and his family making well over half a billion dollars in this. It almost seems like he couldn't lose. Is that healthy to be pushing people in the direction of being able to put their money into things like that?

19:28Yoni Assia:Well, not commenting about specifically this coin or another, I think what is healthy is always innovation in the markets that represent capital formation opportunities and price formation opportunities. I think that is what finance is about. But there is no doubt. And actually, crypto has brought me more and more to the understanding of the importance of the right regulatory frameworks, the right compliance frameworks. There is no doubt that within financial innovation, financial innovation brings a lot of different opportunities. And some of those opportunities are asymmetric risk, which regulators always try to prevent, or significant risk taking for the wrong people, which regulators correctly try to prevent.

20:20Yoni Assia:We at E-Toro understand that a big part of our responsibility is to make sure that the right investors are investing in the right investments for them and the right risk profile. Is it fair to say that that hasn't happened since the growth of meme coins? I think that there is no doubt cryptocurrency ecosystem as a global ecosystem is a much less regulated ecosystem, therefore a much riskier ecosystem than regulated capital markets. Are people taking advantage of that and to the detriment of some of your customers? I think, again, to the detriment of some of our customers, we always try to make sure that first our customers' best interests are in mind.

21:09Yoni Assia:And second is that what we bring and put on the platform actually goes through quite a serious regulatory framework that we've built to make sure that we're not putting in coins. We support today about 200 crypto assets and understand versus about 12 ,000 different capital markets, stocks from 26 different stock exchanges. But people could get, say, the Trump coin through your platform. We did support the Trump coin, I have to say, by the way, it was, I think, a very interesting time. I've been to the inauguration event of crypto in D.C. on a Friday when suddenly at 12 midnight, everybody was starting to look at their phone because they realized Trump just released a coin and all of the OGs were there.

22:02Yoni Assia:nobody knew he was going to release that coin. And you saw the surprise on people's faces when they're like, did this just happen? So I think, again, a lot of these events are very interesting. Some of them represent... Interesting. It's very, it's okay, I guess, for a boss of a platform, a founder of a platform, as you are, to call it interesting. It may be okay for those that have made hundreds of millions of dollars of this to call it interesting. But for those that have lost those billions of dollars, they wouldn't consider it interesting, would they? There's a famous framing around the word interesting and whether interesting is a positive or a negative connotation to it.

22:45Which one are you using when you talk about this?

22:47Yoni Assia:So I personally, you know, I'm a curious person. I believe in finding a lot of opportunities. I have to say personally, I've invested in many companies and crypto assets. In the Trump coin yourself? Even the Trump coin myself. A lot of companies I invested in and I saw them going down 99%. And that was when I was about 17 years old and 18 years old. And I've learned a lot. Much older with the Trump coin. Did you lose money on that? Were you one of those? I haven't looked at the prices of Trump coin recently. I think you'd have a good guess. It's not where the price you bought it at. But I think that when I'm investing in high risk assets and personally I do.

23:32Yoni Assia:And by the way, my profile is public. So any listener can go to eToro.com and type Yoni Asia to see all of the historical trades I've ever done for, I think, the past since 2012 on the platform past 14, 15 years. then you can see that when I'm investing in a high risk whether it's a stock or whether it's a coin I would usually do it with less than one percent of my portfolio probably even less than half a percent of my portfolio sometimes these and that's just your portfolio on etore it's really important to remember isn't it that when you follow these people you're not aware of the the properties they might own, the investments and assets they might have that are away from the side.

24:16So it actually is much, much smaller, that percentage you're talking about, than even what we would see.

24:23Yoni Assia:It's even smaller than obviously my total wealth, which some of it is obviously still correlated to the Toro share price since we went public as well. And that is not on the Toro platform yet as part of my portfolio. and we definitely understand that the public portfolios on eToro of the popular investors, a part of our pro-investor program, are a part of their portfolio. That is the portfolio that they feel comfortable to show the returns. You can actually see daily returns, the entire portfolio location. And when you copy someone, you copy that public portfolio. We're actually launching this week subaccounts as well to enable our customers to actually They sort of separate between their different risk appetites potentially into different subaccounts, even creating for your kids subaccounts.

25:17Yoni Assia:So if you have kids, I have five kids. I created five subaccounts for each of my kids under my account in eToro to invest longer term, by the way, mostly in BlackRock iShares ETFs long term for them. And when they eventually turn 18, I'll transfer for them their account. So, again, we do understand the reasoning for people to differentiate between their different risk appetite and their different strategies. And I think that is a big part of investing is understanding the risk of different products, understanding what is the capital that you want to allocate to a specific risk product. And at the end of the day, when you're able to actually manage that risk, so I'm sure you're familiar a bit with the math of the efficient markets and efficient portfolios, that if you are able to invest in multiple high opportunity investments that are uncorrelated to one another, which again is why the different markets and diversity, both global diversity.