Cryp-no?

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1:19Hello, welcome. This is Wake Up To Money. The United States has launched further strikes on Iran after attacks on three oil tankers in the Strait of Hormuz, sending oil prices rising once again. We'll take a look at what that means for the consequences of those price rises. Also, are people cooling on crypto? I speak to the boss of the online trading platform eToro about where its customers are putting their money and have been putting their money. We also talk about Donald Trump's profits from the cryptocurrency world as well. New rules requiring financial checks on high spend gamblers are being brought in by the industry regulator.

1:58We'll hear how companies will react to that. And with the would-be Prime Minister, Andy Burnham, joking about what Westminster calls his Manchester clothes, we'll find out exactly whose shirts and jackets he wears. Wake Up To Money with Sean Farrington. Good morning to you. Wake Up To Money on BBC Five Live. We're going to be chatting to one of those companies that is making some of the garments that have been worn by Andy Burnham in recent weeks. and just seeing what the consequences are when you have a politician putting your stuff front and centre. We've seen it before with politicians in recent years, prime ministers in recent years, where there's certain fashion trends that have been picked up by them.

2:42Is that a good thing for those making those clothes or not? We'll talk about that as a fair bit of politics to get into and wake up to money, as you will not be surprised, given the front page of the papers and the headlines being made over the last 24 hours. Lots to talk about with Simon French, Chief Economist and Head of Research at Panmere Liberum. Good morning to you, Simon. Good morning, Sean. I've got Emma Bohan with us as well, Managing Director of IMS Heat Pumps, which installs heat pumps, solar panels, batteries across Scotland and England. Busy time of year for you guys, Emma. Good morning to you.

3:17Good morning, Sean. Thank you for being with us. Right, let's start with developments this morning. that we've had about the oil price moving, and that is because of developments in the Middle East. So we're looking at an oil price this morning of around$76 a barrel. Around this time yesterday it was around$71 a barrel. The headlines are that America launching strikes on Iran after tankers were hit in the Strait of Hormuz. Now, Simon, Simon French from Padme Libra, obviously we've talked about this aplenty throughout this year, but when we sort of wake up one morning and see another little spike again you know we're not at a hundred dollars a barrel we're not in that in that realm just yet but when you see what is going on in the Middle East the conversations the responses from Iran and the United States is it going to just be this way for a very long time now?

4:08I think that's right I think the stability of that peace agreement is is being questioned in markets now a physical supply is to get out of the region and US supply of oil is also, well, it's now at an all-time high. So there's still in the minds of markets a supply glut coming, which is keeping prices certainly low. You referenced$100, it was$120 a barrel briefly during April. So we're off a long way from those levels. But the fact that this isn't going to be a straightforward peace deal will mean we'll probably still have a lot of volatility to come, which makes traders happy. I'm not sure it makes real businesses happy trying to fix their energy prices through the summer.

4:56No, and when you look at what this means in the very long term, Simon, is this one of those mornings that reminds us how things have changed, even if there's a feeling that things have calmed down? Seeing little comments from Iran again, whether it's various ministers or spokespeople saying you know we might start charging a fee maybe that's going to be the future charging a fee to get through the strait of hormones that crucial passageway and the like it's it's absolutely the right question to put this into its global context and actually not just its energy market context i think the right context is to say countries around the world are saying how secure how resilient how sensible is it to have very very long supply chains for not just energy but for other strategic assets, be it steel, be it food, there's a whole raft of assets where you go, well, if they are going to be subject to geopolitical tensions, they're going to be subject to, in the case of the US Liberation Day last year in April, significant tariffs, are we going to have to take more control of our domestic supply chain?

6:05And I think this is just another reminder that sourcing crucial ingredients from around the world comes with a risk and those risks have been rising in recent years. And Emma I'm guessing when you've got a heat pump solar panel battery business that some of that might impact you? Yeah absolutely oil prices fluctuate enormously and there's a lot of off-gas homes in the UK who have suffered recently with that recent spike in the oil prices. And so the government's answer to that has been to increase the boiler upgrade scheme voucher from£7 ,500 if you're replacing a gas boiler to£9 ,000 if you are replacing an oil boiler in order to try and move those customers onto electricity, which obviously we can generate in the UK, protect our energy security, and to protect them.

6:57So off-gem and the price cap affects your gas and electricity prices, but oil is subject to the markets. And what we saw with that price rise in the early part of the year was that customers were paying double for the amount of fuel, which at that particular point in the year is a crisis for a lot of people. I mean, during the summer, we've just had the price cap rise again in June, but nobody really pays much attention to it over the summer. We don't have our heating on. We're generally not having the big light on at 3 o 'clock in the afternoon. And so our energy consumption over those months is lower.

7:30But any instability and the use of outside resources for oil and energy does cause us because, you know, that could affect the gas price cap in October again. Did you actually notice, Emma, people moving to electric boilers with those various schemes when there was that price spike earlier in the year? People were making that decision, were they? They are and they are still doing that. The actual boiler uplift scheme for oil comes into play next week, actually, on 21st of July, where instead of getting the£7 ,500 grant towards it, you'll get£9 ,000. And, yeah, that's – yes, every time there is any kind of geopolitical turmoil that involves energy, we see an increase in people moving to heat pumps or solar PV batteries because the prices are, you know, out with people's control and this is something that they can do to try and lower their bills.

8:26Well, we will keep you updated throughout the morning about developments in the Middle East as there are reports of sirens in Bahrain and some of the surrounding states in the Middle East as the situation escalates relative to where it has been in previous days, reports coming out of the region at the moment. So we haven't had them confirmed any more than that at the moment, where, say, the Bahrain state broadcaster is saying that some U.S. bases in Kuwait, a state broadcaster has said that some U.S. bases in Kuwait and Bahrain have been hit by Iran guards. And we're hearing about, you know, sirens going off in those regions, as we have done throughout the time of this war.

9:16So when we get confirmation of those, we will let you know. And as the prices move, which can often be the most straightforward way on Wake Up To Money for us to see what the reaction is to some of these developments, the barrel of Brent crude this morning,$76 a barrel. Now, let's talk about the world of investing, trading, cryptocurrencies. We can have a debate about whether some of those fall under the same heading or not. But I've been chatting to the boss of one of Europe's most used trading platforms who's told me that investors are moving away from cryptocurrencies. So this is Yoni Asir, who's the founder and chief executive of eToro.

9:59He's listed on the NASDAQ in America. It's got about 40 million users across 75 countries. In the latest report from the company in May, it said that cryptocurrency trade, so when we talk about cryptocurrencies, that could be the most common one, Bitcoin, but there have been plenty, plenty others as well that have become available in the years since Bitcoin launched. And there have been plenty of big price moves as well in a lot of those. And in their latest report, they say that crypto trades on eToro were down by nearly a third year on year. And at the same time, they'd seen trading in traditional assets like stocks and commodities jumping by almost 60 percent as well.

10:42So there was a lot to get into with Yanni Asya. We spoke as well about that recent revelation that President Trump had made more than 600 million dollars from that from his own cryptocurrency, from that Trump meme coin, which plunged in value since he launched it days before taking office. I started asking, Yanni Asya, if eToro customers were cooling on crypto. 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. What we've seen in the last four cycles, so if you think of crypto, you have what people call the super cycles.

11:222013 all-time high, 2017 all-time high, 2021 all-time high, 2025 all-time high, then 2014 correction, 2018 correction, 2022 correction, 2026 correction. A reminder of the boom and bust of cryptocurrencies, isn't it? 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. But there is a difference, isn't there, with cryptocurrencies? One, it's pretty relatively new. And two, you've just described a cycle of boom and bust where people on regular occasions over the last decade or so could have lost a lot of money at any point.

12:11Sure. But when I met Buffett for the famous Crypto Buffett launch and I 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. 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.

12:54And when you look at the numbers of the amount that people who bought that coin did end up losing, 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 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? 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.

13:42I think that is what finance is about. But 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. And we at Eitoro understand that a big part of our responsibility is to make sure that the right investors are investing in the right investments for them. 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 in D.C.

14:25on a Friday when suddenly at 12 midnight, everybody was starting to look at their phone because they realized Trump just released a coin. and you saw the surprise on people's faces. I think, again, a lot of these events are very interesting. But interesting, 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.

15:09Which one are you using when you talk about this? 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. But again, the logic of capital markets is something I deeply believe in, which is capital formation and price formation and laissez-faire, which means when people do understand, should understand the risks, the fact that buyers and sellers match creates price formation that is fair.

16:10Again, assuming everything is fair and there is symmetric information for everyone. Can it be fair when you have very powerful people? I'll give you just another example just to understand sort of the difference between crypto assets and the stock markets. There's about 40 ,000 roughly total stocks of public companies in the world right now, depending on how you have 40 to 60 ,000, versus 40 ,000 new meme coins created on Solana every day. And those companies, you can go and you can see who's running them. You can see what their profits have been for a few years. You can see what the product is that they're selling, they're making.

16:52You can see what the historical performance has been. And there's so many things. With these 40 ,000 coins that you talk about, you wouldn't have a clue where to start, would you? If you would look at my portfolio, you'd actually see that I'm much more personally a value investor. I actually have a dividend yield pocket within my portfolio. And, you know, I'm a big fan of Buffett. So I do think it's about different opportunities. But it's the balance. What I'm saying is if we're getting to a point where bank accounts in the line, you open your bank account, mobile phone app, and you see how much money you've just got in from your salary.

17:28And in the line below that is, do you want to buy some crypto? Click here. Is that the right balance? I think we found a great balance to provide people opportunities, knowledge. And now with AI to really have to leveling the playing field with the most sophisticated firms in the world. If you look at the stories, whether it's Buffett and his amazing returns over the past 50, 60 years, a part of what he says is everyone can actually do it. This is quoting him. People should be educated about the markets. They need to learn how to read financial reports, how to find value in capital markets. So that was Yoni Asya, the chief executive and founder of the trading platform eToro.

18:14After the interview, he actually checked his investment in that Trump meme coin. And he discovered he'd already closed his position on that. And on that coin, the White House Deputy Press Secretary, Anna Kelly, said the president had made the US the crypto capital of the world and never engaged or would never engage in conflicts of interest. Simon French from Pamela Libra, Chief Economist, Head of Research there. I mean, there was a lot in that, Simon, you know, just, but getting sort of to the essence of what, you know, people putting their money into things is all about. What did you make of some of the thoughts there?

18:47Well, it was a fascinating interview, Sean. I thought the point you were making about the difference between publicly listed companies and assets where you understand the management teams, you understand the assets they own, they have an intrinsic value, they own land, factories, intellectual property, commodities, versus meme coins, which as the name suggests, the meme, the trend is the value. And I think the risk on some of these platforms, and you were honing in on it, is that they are seen as substitutes, as in the idea that a meme coin and an investment in a company with a very clear regulatory structure and assets are in some way the same.

19:36They are very, very different. And even within crypto assets, there's quite a spectrum from pure meme coins where there's no embedded value. It's just whether you think you can sell it on someone at a higher price versus things like stable coins, where stable coins, they are a digital asset, which is backed by government debt or fiat currencies, or in some case commodities. There's actually something there. So the point at the end of the interview about that investor education is absolutely key if we're going to make it easier for people to engage with this. And Emma, Emma Bowen, who's with us, IMS Heat Pumps boss.

20:12Is this something, Emma? I don't know whether you yourself, the group of friends and family, whatever it might be, have you noticed effectively, as the boss of eToro was describing there, and he was saying to me how the interest in this stuff has just increased so much, particularly amongst younger generations. Have you noticed that interest to be able to access and whether it's play around with or invest in this stuff has changed? Yeah, well, I mean, for myself, you know, I recently took a little dive into the stocks and shares with the movement from the allowances to cash stocks and shares. And, you know, it was quite easy to do.

20:53There's lots of different platforms that enable you to buy and sell shares very easily. and one of the pies I invested in was crypto. I mean, I don't know really anything about it other than you hear it, it's something new. You see things like Trump coin being released and so I thought, oh, you know, I think I've got 500 pounds sat in about seven or eight different crypto companies which is not worth 500 pounds now. But I think the thing, and Simon just touched on it there and you touched on it in the interview, is that for most people, I'm going to say, you know, the lay person like myself, You know, what does crypto buy?

21:29You know, I'm investing in something that, as Sam just said, it's not they don't make cars. They're not churning out energy from oil. They're not selling, you know, a Greg's pasty. I don't know what it is really that I'm buying. And it comes with a bit of a, you know, it's what the dark underworld trades in. It's what, you know, people who are blackmailing companies want paying in. And, you know, like it all feels a little bit shady in some respects to somebody like me. But it is something that's talked about. As I say, though, I've just caught that, obviously, that downward trend that he was talking about in 2026.

22:01And my£500 is not worth that now. And did you learn anything from that whole experience, Emma? Because, you know, a lot of this, whether it's stocks and shares, you know, part of what we hear the government wants us to be doing more, investors want us to be doing more, is learning about how this stuff works. Absolutely. And I think that whole education piece, you know, the movement of the ISA boundaries from cash to stocks and shares is, you know, is where the government is wanting us to invest our money. But I think, you know, in America, our average person, you know, is much more educated around that.

22:36And there is a lot more stocks and shares investing over there than there is over here. and the view that the government is persuading you to put your money away in there for the long term, then I think that there's a really big emphasis on educating people about, A, what you're getting involved with, B, how long you've really got to put your money in there if you're wanting to see some returns and how you go about doing that. We are just not in the UK educated really about the stock market at all. Well, we try to bring a little bit of it on Wake Up To Money and see if that helps along the way.

23:12It's always very interesting to hear how people are reacting to that. 85058, your thoughts, whether it's on that interview with the boss of eTaro, the world of investing, what it is you're thinking about, what you would like to do. Do you have the spare cash at all to be able to dabble in any of this stuff? Do you have the spare cash to be able to invest more in your longer-term future? Do let me know your thoughts about that. Talking about long-term future, Simon, there's a few headlines being made about the long-term prospects for the UK economy from the Office for Budget Responsibility. And so, you know, some of the headlines on the papers are pointing that towards Andy Burnham, the front of the Telegraph.

23:57Burnham must raise taxes by£120 billion to avoid crisis, warns the Office for Budget Responsibility, which sort of keeps an eye on the Treasury's numbers of how they run the public finances. What is this actually all about? Long-term plans, next Prime Minister. Yeah, so every two years, the Office for Budget Responsibility produce their Fiscal Risks and Stability Report, which takes a long-term, a 50-year view on the sustainability of the UK public finances. And first of all, the health warning. When you're projecting forward over 50 years, very, very small differences on the assumption for things like growth or inflation or earnings growth can have a huge impact when we're looking at what happens in the mid-2070s.

24:46Having said all that, the warnings you're alluding to are correct insofar as if policy is unchanged on areas like the triple locking of the state pension, the commitment to increase defence spending or the aspiration actually to increase defence spending to 3.5 % of GDP, the healthcare spending that we plan to have under an NHS that's free of the point of use, the social care funding model, all those things, if they were to remain unchanged, changed would create the type of headlines that you're seeing on your platform you've just spoken about this morning in terms of the big gap emerges between the cost of running the state and the amount of tax we can expect to get.

25:28And of course, if you bridge that gap, you've only really got a couple of options. You either tax more or you borrow more if you're not prepared to change policy and reduce spending. So some big, big decisions to make for Andy Burnham, But he will be no different, if it is he who takes over as Prime Minister, to all the Prime Ministers actually of the last 20 years, I haven't got time to name them all, who have faced the same challenges. But they probably all conclude in a five-year electoral cycle and Andy Burnham will get a maximum three years, at least in this Parliament, making decisions that will only bear fruit decades hence might not be his top priority.

26:1085058, your thoughts? How the economy's going? Where your money's going? How's the temperature this morning? Simon, a little weather check. You're down in the south of England, aren't you? Yeah, sure. I'd say muggy for this time of the morning. That would be my rather report. It's never a good feeling to have, is it? Emma, whereabouts are you based? I'm sat in my living room in Sheffield. Sheffield. The sun is shining. Looks like it's going to be a beautiful day. It feels like this heatwave in the north of England isn't maybe quite hitting as early as it is for the south of England compared to a few weeks ago.

26:48I'm in an air-cond studio in Salford Quays at the moment, so I haven't got a clue really what it was like outside. It was a bit breezy a few hours earlier. But, Emma, crucially, just looking at the weather forecast maps for the coming days, and we're going to hear it in the weather forecast coming up on Five Live as well. It's getting hotter. It's going to be getting hotter. How are people reacting to the forecasts of this heat wave, given we had one a couple of weeks ago? So we are selling a lot of cooling chips. so heat pumps do uh a lot of air to water air source heat pumps uh do have the ability to do what they call um a cooling function which is where the water that they put through your radiator underfloor system is cooler so it becomes like a heat sink so we are selling a lot of those chips uh lots of inquiries for air to air air source heat pumps uh which the government have said that there is a£2 ,500 subsidy coming down the line for the installation of these.

27:54But I think there is a bit of a public misconception that they can get that funding to basically install air conditioning, which is, you know, the air-to-air system. Imagine you're in a hotel room. When you go in that hotel room, it's an air system that heats you up in the winter, also cools you down in the summer. So that is an air-to-air heat pump. And this subsidy is available. But it is not for you to install one of those in your living room and one of those in your bedroom. It is a replacement for your entire heating system. So if I was going to do it in my house, out go my radiators, in go air boxes in all the habitable rooms.

28:30And that is the system. Is that a common system of people buying into that? I say, oh, wow, because that is a very drastically different way of warming a home, having vents in like you might do in a hotel around the country. Absolutely. And so, as I say, I think there's a little bit of public education or misinformation in terms of what that involves. If you go into Europe, you'll find that in a lot of newer bills where, I mean, I lived in a home in America for a while, and, you know, that was all vented underfloor, so it was, you know, blew your air out through the winter and then cooled it down during the summer.