How eToro’s CEO Sold BTC at the 2025 Top — and Why He’s Buying Back In

Very big thing coming in 2026 is real world assets moving on chain. Our younger audience on Etoro, they expect everything to trade 24, 7. They're like, why is the market, why are the markets closed on Saturday?

Are we going to get back to $100,000?

I actually sold the day at 125 at the peak. But then in Toiber. Yeah, in October, 6th of October. But then I started buying and buying and buying and everything is public on my Etoro account. Cycles in the markets are a part of the markets. You know, I, I fell in love and got burned in the markets during the dot com bubble. I'm that old. So, you know, I started trading when I was 13. Then the market started going up, up, up, up. And then you start increasing your risk as a trader. Always. I see that with Etoro customers today as well. And then markets peak and when they crash, you know, you see a lot of things fail. And in finance you have to. And that's why you have regulations in finance. Right. And in finance you have to remember to manage risks and to manage the business properly, always to be resilient to changes in the markets. And like all every crypto cycle that we've seen, like we launched Bitcoin on Etoro a month before Mount Gox collapsed. So that was like the first cycle we experienced in crypto. Then you had the ICO boom and bust of 201718 with a lot of ICOs going to zero. And then you have the crypto lending disaster of 2021. So every cycle you have a bit of like frosty markets that explode, explode. And when again, when they explode, a lot of things go with it.

How do you personally deal with the stress of the crypto market being so volatile?

First of all, it's not all of our business, right? So we're now a publicly traded company. So all of our numbers are public, but around 3.8 million funded accounts with around $20 billion. So what we see is our customers trading stock stocks, commodities and capital markets and crypto. And every time we see crypto sort of going down, we double down on stocks. We help our customers diversify. I also very much believe in it myself. Diversification is an important strategy for an investor, right? For b. As an investor, for a retail investor on Etoro and for a business. So we have a diversified business across crypto capital markets, asset based revenue, subscription model and payments. And then when markets go down, other, when crypto markets go down, basically other parts of the business expand and vice versa. That's also What I tell our retail investors is diversify your portfolio. So when one market is down and another market is up, you can actually buy the deep because you've diversified your portfolio.

Yeah, absolutely. And you're a father as well. You've got, is it five kids?

Five kids, yeah.

So how do you, how does that work? How do you go, you know, managing a platform, bringing in billions of dollars of trading volume and then walking in the door at night to your kids? How are you able to separate that work life balance?

First of all, my kids are now trading on Etoro too. And my wife actually runs a company, iAngels, that invest in startups, like in 100 different startups, about $500 billion. Like a platform for investing in startups. So we talk like, we don't really separate business and family. Like, also my house was like that. We always talked about the markets, about capital markets. And I want my kids to understand what I do. I open the demo account, City Toro.

Is any of them really good at trading?

My son, 14, had a demo account and he took it from 100,000 to 150,000. And then he goes to me and says, hey, why didn't you give me real money? And I said, yeah, but you're going to get like $1,000, not over $100,000. So don't get too excited. But you know, it's a part of it. And you know, I'm a big believer in family and being in the house and spending time and quality time with the kids as well. And a part of that is also for them to understand. What does Etoro do? How does the world work? What is Bitcoin? And actually it's funny because my son likes gaming stocks. He's all day long on Roblox, so he's like, okay, can I buy Roblox stock? I'm like, sure.

Nice. Amazing. And obviously people that want to know more about yourself, Yoni, I mean, what, what is personally something that you want to achieve yourself in 2026? Not even just related, but just personally as well.

Super exciting. Now in this space is, you know, we've been in capital markets before crypto, right. So we founded eToro in 2007. Very excited about also taking out the company public on Etoro. So Etoro users can buy Etoro stock on the Etoro platform. And we've been very early on to talk about tokenization. Back in 2012, we wrote the colored coins white paper with Vitalik Buterin about how to tokenize assets on top of the Bitcoin protocol. And it's actually, it's funny because it's now coming back. So protocol that we talked about in 2012 is now coming back because of the new version in Bitcoin. But I think generally tokenization is now coming to a mature space because one, this industry obviously is already sort of too big to fail by far. Regulators are now very focused and understand the benefits of blockchain and real time settlement and transparency and blockchain explorers for real world assets. So I think that's a very big thing coming in 2026 is real world assets moving on chain. More things that are tradable 24, 7. Right. So our younger audience on Etoro, they expect everything to trade 24, 7. They're like, why is the market, why are the markets closed on Saturday? And I think that's capital markets moving on chain. And you have the SEC chairman saying all US capital markets are moving on chain, which is a wow statement coming from the largest capital markets in the world. And capital markets copying crypto markets and everything moving to 24. 7. Less limitless, borderless.

Absolutely. And I'd love to hear more about the tokenized stocks with yourself. Obviously in August you guys launched in Europe, US tokenized stocks.

So it's a lot about transferability because on our platform we already had stocks. Right. So for other crypto platform it's like, okay, let's try and bring securities into the crypto platform where on Etoro we've always sold both securities and digital assets and crypto assets on Etoro. But I do think transferability and the ability for customers to actually send shares to one another, I think that's a great feature. Right. It's better than stablecoin. Why hold dollars if you can hold Etoro stock or Apple stock or Tesla stock? And second is DeFi. So we are launching also a non custodial wallet to enable basically our customers to start using on chain protocols, whether it's prediction markets, whether it's DEFI protocols like lending. Right. So up until now we've been focused very much on sort of our regulated financial services, etoro across Europe, UK, Singapore, Australia, US and I think when you look at DeFi, it opens very interesting opportunities in spaces where we weren't active.

Absolutely. And you know, recently the NASDAQ head of digital assets actually said that they're going to really push to get a response out of the SEC regarding the tokenized stocks on their end. I mean, what's your thoughts on that with the U.S. and I guess the Clarity act that everyone is anticipating to come to fruition next year.

I think there's very clear now tone of the top cut from the U.S. right. So when you have the chair of SEC saying capital markets are moving on chain, they're actually really moving this entire industry. And I think you know the friendliest SEC administration in history for digital assets and for that process. We're here in Abu Dhabi also a very, very friendly space that wants to be the crypto capital of the of the region or of the world. So I think we're seeing more and more regulators looking at the space understanding now this is the future. And what do you have a lot of regulators saying okay, this is happening in the industry, right. You have Fidelity tokenizing money market funds, you have BlackRock tokenized market. Those two together manage $25 trillion Franklin Templeton as a money market fund. That's another $2.5 trillion. So when you have the trillion dollar asset managers tokenizing already assets and you have all of the large asset managers like DA Polo and Carla and Blackstone talking about tokenization and doing tokenization in nasdaq, I think it's happening.

Yeah, absolutely. And just moving on to the crypto market now for I guess you've got 20 odd days left of December. Bitcoin is below what it was at the start start of this year. I mean what price are we going to end up with? Are we going to get back to $100,000?

You know I'm good at medium to long term price predictions. Everyone wants to know I'm a good medium to long term predictor. But you can see my profile on Etoro and I actually sold the day at 125 at the peak. But then chober. Yeah. In October, 6th of October, which by the way was exactly the date of the pre crypto cycle. Right. It's on the day the four years, the four year cycle cycle is over. Nothing is permanent in capital markets and you always get surprises. But we actually went. But then I started buying and buying and buying and everything is public on my Etoro account. So again I think if you think of the end of next year, we're definitely above $100,000 for the next 20 days. Hard to predict.

What about the end of next year? What do you anticipate? 2026 the highest price I I think.

Will be above all time high at the end of 2026.

Amazing. Thank you so much. I appreciate it.

Sam.