Crypto in The Multi-Asset Investor

Crypto exchange-traded funds or products (ETPs) were reintroduced to the UK in October 2025. Given the volume of emails and comments, there seems to be much confusion, so I will clarify the main points. Crypto ETPs are now tradable on all major UK investment platforms, including Hargreaves Lansdown, which recently added them.

Crypto ETPs:

• CAN be held in a SIPP.
• CANNOT be held in an ISA.
• CAN be held in an Innovative ISA (IFISA). The only company offering crypto IFISAs at present is Stratiphy.

In addition:

• Bitcoin and Ethereum are the only allowable crypto investments to be listed on the London Stock Exchange.
• BOLD is the ticker for the 21Shares Bitcoin Gold ETP, created by ByteTree, and is also listed on the London Stock Exchange.

Last week, we conducted a poll about how the Soda and Whisky portfolios should respond to the availability of crypto ETPs in the UK. Previously, we couldn't ask these questions because crypto ETPs were banned. Now they are not and trade on HL, so I laid out three simple questions to clients last week. Thank you to those who participated.

Poll Results on Bitcoin, BOLD, and Ethereum in The Multi-Asset Investor

ByteTree’s Background in Crypto

For those unclear on ByteTree’s background, we began as a crypto analysis company called Crypto Composite Ltd. That mission was technically impressive, but commercially unsuccessful. We changed our name to ByteTree and focused on research and products to benefit investors in a multi-asset world, including crypto. ByteTree represents a digital money tree made up of “bytes”. One byte is 8 “bits”.

It surprises me how much resistance there is to including crypto and things like commodities in a product called “The Multi-Asset Investor”. Embracing alternative assets was de rigueur pre-2008. Since then, increasing regulatory pressure has made this harder, and mainstream portfolios have returned to equities and bonds. At least one of those turned out well.

When I left HSBC Asset Management over a decade ago, one reason was that as a fund manager with expertise in alternatives, I found the world of index tracking in equities and bonds unappealing.

With a background in commodities, emerging markets, credit, growth, value and so on, I was enthused by Bitcoin. It was something new and different. Any multi-asset investor worth their salt should be intrigued by new assets, especially those with high returns and low correlation.

This all came at a time when gold traded at just over $1,050 per ounce after a brutal 45% slump. It never occurred to me that Bitcoin, the world’s best-performing asset in history that retail investors had early access to, would be outright rejected by the financial establishment. That remains broadly the case to this day. 

You can now buy a crypto ETP in the UK, just as you could pre-October 2020, but that doesn’t mean it’s easy. There’s a test where you have to gladly accept that you’re willing to lose all your money, and that the system takes no responsibility.

But Why Does Crypto Get So Much Additional Stick?

Crypto has risk, fine. So do all investments.

I cite the 3-times short and leveraged silver ETP. I successfully traded it in April 2013, when I had a high-conviction bearish view on silver, but readily acknowledge that it is a dangerous investment vehicle. It only makes money when the silver price is falling, and on every day the silver price bounces, investors lose their shirt. Since it launched at the end of 2012, £100 invested is down to £2.68, even though the price of silver has more than doubled.

In recent years, Bitcoin has never lost people material amounts of money. Even if you bought at the peak a year ago, you’d be down 23%, having been down 45% at worst. Gilts have fallen more than that, as has the FTSE 100 on many occasions. In fact, the UK Treasury Index Linked 2073 is currently down 87% over five years, but there are no risk warnings on that.

Over any reasonable timeframe, Bitcoin investors are quids in. I do not understand why Bitcoin, which has been one of the greatest investments of all time, has been treated as harshly as a 3X short silver ETP. One is a new system of money and value transfer that will thrive as AI grows its transaction base, while the other is a bet on the gee-gees.

Crypto Scams

It is very sad that some people have lost money in crypto. There have been humorous projects such as Dogecoin and Fartcoin, the so-called “memecoins”. These were jokes and a sign of the times, and were never meant to be taken seriously. They are unrelated to Bitcoin.

There were also a wide range of scams, Ponzi schemes, and fake crypto investment schemes. People get greedy, especially during booms. This rattles me because banning Bitcoin ETPs fed the scams, making the situation worse than it needed to be. Surely a rational person would buy Bitcoin from the London Stock Exchange rather than from a stranger? My point is that Bitcoin never did anything wrong, nor was it ever a scam. To my mind, it is a highly credible investment, but the system still has its doubts.

Anyway, that is all water under the bridge. The crypto ETP ban has been reversed, and so it is time to ask the questions.