Should you invest in crypto? What the experts (and the numbers) really say
Written by Boring Money
23 July, 2026
Trump made $1.4bn from crypto last year. Most investors didn't make a penny. So is crypto a genuine investment opportunity, a pyramid scheme, or just FOMO dressed up as a strategy? We look at the numbers, the risks, the regulation - and whether it deserves a place in your portfolio.
Is cryptocurrency a pyramid scheme?
Donald Trump released his annual earnings at the start of July. Of the eye-watering $2bn he made last year, around $1.4bn came from cryptocurrencies
, including new crypto products and meme coins. He’s not the only one making money from crypto assets. The UK’s Nigel Farage has also been on the fringes of the crypto ecosystem, receiving financial support from crypto billionaires.This is where FOMO may be taking over for many investors. Are they missing out on big gains to be made from crypto? Those who recognised the opportunity early are now sitting on millions and, as Trump and Farage have showed, it can seem like a route to easy profits. Those who invested in Bitcoin a decade ago could have bought a single Bitcoin for around $500. Today, it would be trading at over $47,500.
However, it is also worth noting that the recent history of cryptocurrencies is different – and most people have not been making any money. Over one year, the Bitcoin price has dropped 46%, while Ethereum prices are down 49.2% [1]. Donald Trump may have made plenty of money on his meme coin, but investors have not: it launched at $45 in January 2025 but is now just $1.50.
This has reinforced the idea for some that crypto is essentially a pyramid scheme. These currencies are not backed by any assets or governments; they are simply a unit of exchange. As such, they need to find more and more people to buy them for the price to continue rising. The worry is that they can’t find more people to buy and the price rises have stalled.
However, it is also possible to argue that this is just a short-term blip in the professionalisation of the cryptocurrency industry. There have been moves recently to introduce proper regulation, to wrap cryptocurrencies in protective structures so they can be sold to retail investors.
Crypto has moved on from its retail-led, boom-bust adolescence. The infrastructure largely works, regulation is tightening rather than retreating and capital is behaving more like institutional capital.
This shift towards legitimacy has started to filter through to the platforms most everyday investors use.
Can you buy Bitcoin and Ethereum through your investment platform in the UK?
In particular, crypto exchange traded products
(ETPs) have created an easier way for many institutional and retail investors to access the asset class without having to worry about private keys, digital wallets or unregulated exchanges. The London Stock Exchange now has Bitcoin and Ethereum options. The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) lifted its ban on retail access to these products from the 8th October 2025.They are not yet an option on all platforms. Hargreaves Lansdown, for example, says that clients will have to undertake an appropriateness assessment before being allowed to trade and in some cases, the amount that retail clients can hold in these areas will be restricted to 10% of their total portfolio. Nevertheless, it plans to offer crypto ETN
trading this year.Should you invest in cryptocurrency?
There are a number of factors to consider when investing in cryptocurrencies. The participation of institutional investors and supervision by regulators has helped compress volatiltiy at the margin, particularly for bitcoin, says Silenskyte.
These are longer-term, institutionally aligned holders.
Equally, fears that regulation would kill off crypto assets completely have proved wide of the market. Instead, it is acting as a filter, “concentrating capital into assets and structures that meet governance, custody and transparency standards,” says Silenskyte.
There are patterns emerging to crypto performance that may be useful to understand. Like many assets, it thrives on lower interest
rates. In common with gold, it pays no dividends, therefore low real (after inflation) interest rates create a lower opportunity cost to holding crypto. Higher inflation has been a drag on performance since the start of the year.Bitcoin increasingly behaves like a macro asset. Its fixed supply, decentralised governance and relatively long track record have led to comparisons with gold. The comparison is imperfect, but the direction of travel is clear: Bitcoin is now more frequently treated as a macro asset rather than a technology platform.
However, it points out that other cryptocurrencies may not behave in the same way.
Other networks typically resemble technology platforms rather than monetary assets. They compete across payments, decentralized finance, tokenization, computing and physical infrastructure. Some are narrowly focused; others are designed as broad platforms capable of supporting multiple use cases
Crypto markets tend to be highly sentiment-driven, following patterns of global risk
appetite. For this reason, looking at the crypto Fear and Greed market can be a useful tool to make decisions. It is currently in the ‘fear’ territory, but was at ‘extreme fear’ early this year [2].There are some threats to its ongoing strength. For example, there is an existential question over the impact of quantum computing and whether it may break the critical code that underpins many cryptocurrencies. Quantum computing remains a nascent technology and until recently, this threat seemed remote, but groups such as Ripple now see it as credible and are exploring post-quantum cryptography as a way to secure wallets.
What are the alternatives to buying crypto directly?
There are other ways to invest in the crypto boom. There are a range of Blockchain ETFs
, for example, that focus on companies providing the technology that supports cryptocurrencies - iShares Blockchain Technology UCITS ETF, for instance, or VanEck Crypto and Blockchain Innovators ETF. These are high risk and have been volatile, but are investing in real companies with tangible value. Performance has largely mapped the price of the major cryptocurrencies.Investors could also look at some of the major trading platforms, such as Coinbase, PayPal or Robinhood. While these will have a range of revenue sources, they will be geared to the growth of crypto trading.
Do you have to pay tax on crypto profits in the UK?
A final note is that it is important to be careful on tax. Those trading cryptocurrencies often don’t realise they may need to pay tax on crypto profits. HMRC has significantly expanded its efforts to identify crypto investors through its Cryptoassets Disclosure Facility.
Cryptocurrencies were renowned for being the ‘wild west’ of investing. For many crypto investors this categorisation has stuck and many underestimate how seriously HMRC treats undeclared gains. Even worse, some crypto investors think that gains made through digital assets somehow sit outside the normal tax rules, which is exactly why HMRC is targeting the sector so aggressively.
Cryptocurrency investing has its merits, but investors need to be disciplined. Crypto is undiversified
, has no asset backing and is hugely volatile. It is a new asset class without established patterns of performance. It may be suitable for a small and speculative investment, but there is a danger in seeing it as a path to riches.—-
[1] CoinMarketCap
[2] CoinMarketCap
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