Daniel Gold, Stratiphy CEO On Winning Best Crypto Investment Platform 2026

Richard Berry (00:04.236)
Welcome to Good Money Guide. Today we’re talking to Daniel Gold, who’s the CEO of Stratiphy, which is just one best cryptocurrency investment platform in our twenty twenty six crypto awards. So Dan, how are you? Thank you very much for joining us.

Daniel Gold (00:17.164)
I’m very good, thank you. And delighted to have won the award.

Richard Berry (00:20.91)
Congratulations, you got some you got you got some good feedback. It was nice to see so many happy customers leaving the views.

Daniel Gold (00:26.794)
It was great for us to see that as well. I mean, we’ve built this product, you know, try to create the best solution we can for crypto investors in the UK. And it’s it’s superb to see them turn out and vote for us in in these numbers.

Richard Berry (00:40.494)
Well and I know you’re not just about crypto, but you do have a really innovative crypto offering. So we’ll we’ll we’ll talk about that in a in a minute. But let’s talk about the the business overall. So so stratify it’s relatively new, you’ve been going about a year. Tell us about the tell us about the journey so far.

Daniel Gold (00:58.08)
Yeah, so we launched last August and our product is it’s kind of a hybrid between a brokerage platform where you can buy and sell stocks and ETFs and now ETNs and ETCs. but our unique selling point is you can design your own investment strategy and then backtest it over ten years and then if you like the look of it you can invest into it. And so an investment strategy means buying into

a set of stocks and ETFs based on the criteria that you specify. So you could say, for example, I want to invest into the top momentum stocks in the UK, focusing on the tech sector, focusing on maybe crypto as well, and having looking at certain maximum purchase amount or targeting a certain number of stocks. So you set up the overarching principles for your portfolio and then we back test that over 10 years and see if it would have worked well or not.

Richard Berry (01:54.936)
So how do you do that? Do you do that in a sort of passive or or active way? Do you go on there and say, I would like to invest in the top momentum stocks or the top growth stocks? Or is it a sort of survey you fill in and then you present customers with options?

Daniel Gold (02:09.319)
It it’s more of a survey. So people, you know, they they presented with a survey which is the basic kind of strategy that they can invest into and then they can customize it in any way they want. So they choose their risk appetite, the sectors they want to focus on, the regions, the start of investing, all kinds of granular parameters and thresholds and limits. and then how it works after that is that we simulate what would have happened over the last ten years.

if we had systematically rebalanced that portfolio, meeting those criteria. And so if it if they like the look of that pack test, they click invest and then we construct an initial portfolio for them and then rebalance it on a regular basis. So it’s essentially like buying your own actively managed ETF, but you’re in control, you’re in the driving seat designing that ETF. So it’s not something off the shelf.

Richard Berry (03:01.558)
That’s really cool. And so when people back test these strategies, do you have any cool stats on how many people change their mind after they’ve said they want to do something? So after people have gone, you know, I I like the idea of growth stocks in consumer staples and then it’s not performed quite as well as it should over ten years.

Daniel Gold (03:19.554)
Yeah, sure. I mean we have done some analysis on the whole universe of strategies and there’s a distribution of returns. Some are positive, some are negative. They are skewed significantly towards the positive, which is what we want to see. We can’t guarantee everything’s positive, so that you have that negative tail. but on the whole we’re set up as a an investing platform. We’re trying to encourage people to invest into our strategies because they

enable them to personalize their investments but also to get the benefit of you know professional risk management, diversification, you know, professional portfolio construction. So all the benefits you’d get as a client of a bank or a wealth manager, but doing it on your own in a low cost, auto automated, autonomous way. So because it’s all geared at wealth preservation and wealth generation, we’re not looking

at the kind of customers who want to be highly speculative and and sort of trade in and out very quickly, high frequency. So it’s more people who are buy and hold.

Richard Berry (04:26.272)
Yeah. So so so set and forget. And on the forget side, how often do portfolios and strategies get rebalanced once someone set it up?

Daniel Gold (04:28.822)
It’s essentially set for good.

Daniel Gold (04:36.632)
We rebalance once a month.

Richard Berry (04:39.564)
Okay. so that I think that’s pretty much covered your USP. You know, we always ask like what’s the USP? What what makes you different from everybody else? So it’s AI portfolio construction. what do you think’s gonna be the major theme going forward when it comes to AI and investing?

Daniel Gold (04:57.752)
So I there there’s huge potential of AI. I mean the way we use AI is for parameter optimization. So when you design your strategy, you say you want to invest into, you know, US tech stocks, momentum, you know, maximum purchase amount, X, Y, Z. There are are various parameters which go into that strategy behind the scenes, and we optimize those parameters using traditional machine learning techniques, which is the origins of AI.

The I think the future lies in a more comprehensive use of generative AI. And there are many use cases we’re looking at. So one of the first will be once we generate a portfolio and and we generate signals, then we trade those, we buy them. So explaining to people what’s in the portfolio in layman’s terms in in plain English, I think is a great use case for AI. And then another use case we’re looking at is

kind of helping people get into the strategies in the first place. So coming up with ideas and and then testing those ideas in plain English rather than filling in our form. Okay.

Richard Berry (06:02.974)
We’re talking about doing things in plain English. You are here because you’ve won the cryptocurrency award. I know you’re not on I know you’re not just a crypto platform, but one of the things you offer is cryptocurrency ETNs through your Innovative Financial Icer. Do you just want to talk us through well, first what the innovative financial ISA is and and then we’ll talk about the the crypto ETNs of it.

Daniel Gold (06:24.94)
Yeah, so the innovative finance ISA is an unusual one for an investment platform. It was set up initially for crowdfunding platforms. and so pretty much all the providers of innovative finance ICEs, we call them if ISERs, are these crowdfunding platforms or crowdfunding debt s providers. so that’s just you know a bit of background on what that product is.

And that’s why you don’t see it in the traditional investing space very much. So the FCA in October last year, 2025, deregulated or derestricted access to crypto for retail investors. So they said that if you’re a retailer, you can invest into crypto ETNs as of October. And HMRC governs how we can invest in a tax efficient way. They said you can invest into them in an ISA.

So after a few months, HMRC said at the end of the tax year, so April 2025, you will no longer be able to invest into them in an ISA. They have to be held in an innovative finance ISA. So that was a bit of a surprise to the whole market. we were looking, you know, to see how we can best support our customers. We looked into the opportunity to offer this if ISA, and we were comfortable taking on that risk and that complexity and the development of the new product. And so we offered it.

as of the new tax year. it looks like no one else has taken that position and so we’re the only provider of this product in the market at the moment.

Richard Berry (08:00.166)
First mover advantage. And what’s the difference between a an if Icer and a a standard stocks and shares ICE in terms of you know allowances, what you can hold in them, etc.?

Daniel Gold (08:10.698)
There there’s no difference. I mean that you can hold, you know, it’s the same twenty K allowance. It doesn’t apply to cash ICEs anymore, but you know, it’s the same twenty K allowance you can split across all your ICEs. And in an innovative finance ISO you can hold in our case crypto products only. So you can’t hold stocks, ETFs, ETCs, so it it’s only the crypto.

Richard Berry (08:38.454)
Okay. Do you have a standardizer that if you want to invest in stocks and

Daniel Gold (08:41.582)
We have a standard stocks and shares I see you can hold everything except crypto. Okay. And then our general investment account you can hold everything together ’cause there’s no HMRC restrictions.

Richard Berry (08:52.142)
And then for i is there a different criteria of investor you need to be to open a a an if Icer? ‘Cause w we deal with quite a few providers that offer innovative finance ISAs and I I would say that you know their products are slightly not I fr I don’t know, fringe is maybe like a bit not not right, but they are, you know, not overly mainstream products. So is is there a threshold you have to cross to to open an if Icer or is it the same as a standard ISO?

Daniel Gold (09:22.59)
Yeah, I mean the IFISA product is in some sense is a catch all for anything that can’t be held in an ICE, so it tends to be the kind of more fringe, slightly more exotic products. and so in our case I don’t think that’s different really in in the the way that the FCA regards the industry. Okay. They regard crypto ETNs as restricted mass market instruments and so they’re not mainstream. Okay. And so you have to be a certain investor category to be able to

be eligible to invest. And then there’s all kinds of other controls we put in place. You know, there’s specific risk questionnaires and surveys we do to understand someone’s risk appetite to make sure they’re suitable. We make sure people don’t get too exposed to crypto relative to their whole net investable assets. And we have various enhanced kind of warnings about the risk that people are getting into.

Richard Berry (10:17.848)
Well let’s talk about what crypto ETNs actually are, because they’re slightly different to ETFs. You know, I’m not going to do anything like call the FCA killjoys for not letting UK investors invest in ETFs so they missed a missed a big ball run. but maybe it saves them a little bit ’cause ’cause it’s all come off. But what’s the big difference between a a crypto ETN and a standard ETF?

Daniel Gold (10:44.074)
So an ETN and an ETF are very similar in their exchange traded products. So they are a product ex that’s listed on a stock exchange and there’s price discovery, there’s a market maker behind the scenes, ensuring liquidity. I think the big difference is that an ETN is an exchange traded note, whereas an ex an ETF is an exchange traded fund. So there’s a legal difference in terms of the product structure.

A note is a debt instrument where you have an IOU from the issuer to the customer, saying that they will provide economic return of that note. So that’s just a a legal kind of definition and technical difference. practically what this means is that you get the economic exposure of crypto, you know, Bitcoin or Ethereum in our case. And that has

obviously, you know, if you want to get exposure to the crypto market, you can get that through a regulated product now. But it has several advantages over traditional crypto, including that you don’t have to worry about, you know, the the kind of passwords and logins and tokens and security aspects of holding crypto directly. So you have also peace of mind that it’s regulated and reviewed and everything with the FCA.

Richard Berry (12:03.042)
Yeah, counterparty risk is a big thing is is is is a big thing, isn’t it? What’s the difference between a crypto ETN and crypto in general?

Daniel Gold (12:13.23)
So there’s various differences. I mean, one is that crypto ETNs are a regulated product. So you are buying su buying into something that’s authorized, regulated by the FCA. so the another difference is you don’t have to worry about passwords and security, whereas in direct crypto you have to sign up and and get a get a password to a a wallet. and I think the the third big difference is the tax efficiency. You have the opportunity to invest into crypto

in our if i sonl and not pay tax on the the capital gains. whereas in direct crypto you don’t have that opportunity. Okay.

Richard Berry (12:51.65)
And how safe are investing in crypto ETNs through stratify?

Daniel Gold (12:56.396)
So we we try and make it as safe as possible. So you’re investing into one of the the global leader global leaders in terms of crypto ETN. So we’ve picked twenty one shares as our crypto ETN partner. They are the biggest provider in Europe, they have one of the most diverse ranges of products, they’ve got the longest track record on the FCA. all of their ETNs are a hundred percent physically collateralized. and our custodian in in the UK wealth kernel is

you know, an independent FCA authorised custodian. So the county party risk to any one party is limited in that sense. Okay.

Richard Berry (13:35.106)
What about FSCS protection? Do you get that with an innovative financial ISO if you’ve got a crypto product in there?

Daniel Gold (13:40.566)
That’s good question. So the the F T FSCS does not cover any crypto investments, so that’s an e explicit carve out of the rules.

Richard Berry (13:49.624)
So we even even through an ETN there’s no No.

Daniel Gold (13:51.862)
F the C FCS coverage.

Richard Berry (13:54.54)
So as far as investors are concerned, it’s the same as investing in a stock or share on the stock market. You’re still buying and and buying and selling in the market as you would do Apple or Lloyd shares.

Daniel Gold (14:05.1)
Yeah, to all intents and purposes it’s equivalent to buying a stock. So you’re buying a a share of crypto, a share of Bitcoin.

Richard Berry (14:12.238)
Okay. And where do you think the future of crypto I’m not asking you for predictions on where you think the the the crypto market is is going, but do you think it’s going to become more mainstream in investor portfolios?

Daniel Gold (14:26.316)
Yeah, I mean look it’s it’s the million dollar or million bitcoin question that everyone wants to know, right? It’s is it be gonna become more mainstream? I think w the proof is in the pudding, right? We are seeing it becoming more mainstream. We’re seeing the you know, first of all you see the FCA, the American regulators, European regulators all regulating crypto access. And I think the UK is actually behind what you can do in the US and Europe in many ways. So we’re catching up.

Because it’s becoming more mainstream, it becomes eligible for different types of investors, whether that’s high net worths or institutionals, they are seeing this as a component of a broad asset class Caucasian strategy. so a multi asset strategy. It’s viewed as a store of wealth just like gold these days. and that’s being played out in terms of looking at the volatility historically. Volatility of Bitcoin used to be

much higher than it is today. And that I think is a direct consequence of it being more mainstream and being adopted more widely in the market.

Richard Berry (15:32.376)
So do you think it’s gonna become more a store of wealth rather than a a payments network? Which was the the the sort of white paper, like that was that that was the dream, wasn’t it, that it would become a an alternative payments network?

Daniel Gold (15:45.142)
Yeah, I mean if you’re asking for my personal opinion, I think that’s the case. I think it will be viewed more as a store of wealth. but having said that, it is already being viewed more as a payment mechanism for certain products. I think in the last week we saw Emirates offering the ability to buy airline tickets with Bitcoin. So, you know, there are steps being taken to encourage that. But I I I think long term it it the

The direction of travel is clear, it’s a store of wealth type of product. Crypto? Yep. I have some crypto investments and I think I’ve got in a okay time so far. it’s relatively recently.

Richard Berry (16:17.942)
Are you invested in

Richard Berry (16:28.95)
not too recently, I hope.

Daniel Gold (16:30.908)
yeah, it’s fallen a lot recently, but I think you that there’s an argument to say that this is maybe a a good time to get into it while the market’s depressed.

Richard Berry (16:37.816)
Well, that’s the market, isn’t it? You know, if you are, you know, no nobody should be really if you if you’re an investor and trying to store wealth and gold, you shouldn’t really be trying to time the gold market ’cause that’s had some pretty volatile months recently. so talking of your investments actually, let’s go through some of your best and worst personal investments. ‘Cause I find it fascinating when people are brokers, you know, they sit in the middle, provide the services, but it’s really interesting to hear you know, where they’ve done well and particularly where they’ve done badly so that they can

give out some of their their lessons to to would be investors. So should we start would you want to do best or worst first? Let’s give it best. What’s been your best investment over

Daniel Gold (17:13.933)
let’s go for best. I mean so in in terms of the stock market, I’ve invested into I I I’ve tried to make my investments follow a a quant investment strategy approach. So that means I analyse the market, I try to diversify. So it’s about following a broad you know, strategy in the market. And so from that approach there’s been a few winners, you know, we

They’re looking at BAE, Rolls Royce, they’ve been strong performers. But they’re not particularly exciting, they’re blue chip names.

Richard Berry (17:50.7)
two of the glory UK stocks though, aren’t They’ve done well. You know, it’s like you look at what people are looking for and Rolls Royce and and BAE are

Daniel Gold (17:59.022)
They’ve been very strong in the last few years. But I think the standout performers has been sort of private investments. I’ve done a bit of angel investing too and investing into some sort of startup AI medical companies have been very good. so one I invested into was looking at improving the diagnosis of colonoscopies using AI and that was done in the kind of

seed round, like well friends and family round. and they got an exit. So that was a great kind of outcome. so th there’s kind of winners and losers.

Richard Berry (18:36.216)
Well that’s great. And but we’re particularly ’cause we were talking earlier, weren’t we, about how the the innovative finance ISA, one of the things you can hold on it is is crowdfunding investments. And one of the problems with crowdfunding investments is is liquidity is is getting out. Like, you know, they always look good on paper, but actually being able to exit is another thing. So how diverse is your portfolio of private investments? ‘Cause it’s you know, what do they say? Like one in a hundred or one in ten? It’s it’s a fairly

You’re gonna have some fairly broad strokes.

Daniel Gold (19:07.446)
Yes. I mean you’ve got to take a view and you’ve got to invest into things you understand. and it’s highly risky. So I I take the same approach with priv inve private investments that I do with public investments. You know, they have to be diversified. Don’t put too much into any investment. Definitely don’t invest anything you’re not prepared to lose. a and so it’s quite diverse based on that. and you know, like with the private im what like with the public investments, I’ve had some winners and some losers.

so there’s a mix of outcomes.

Richard Berry (19:39.886)
What about your worst investment?

Daniel Gold (19:42.38)
My worst investment by far is an investment into Aston Martin at the IPO. I I fell into the the kind of the the hype at the time and I thought it’s an opportunity to buy into one of the kind of flagship UK automotive brands and I thought with the pub with public money that would take them to the next level and I couldn’t have been more wrong. I think i it immediately it fell like a stone.

Richard Berry (19:48.63)
Okay. Yeah yeah.

Daniel Gold (20:09.878)
And it never stopped falling ever since. Like i i it was a bit of a disaster.

Richard Berry (20:14.264)
British car manufacturers. They are just not for the markets.

Daniel Gold (20:17.376)
Right cause, but good investment.

Richard Berry (20:18.616)
Great car. Yeah. We say we’ve been writing analysis on Aston Martin for years and it’s always been a bear. Always, yeah, always been a bear. I quite often want to do a a a hedge hedging example of shorting Aston Martin stock but buying one of their classic cars for the for the buy the cars, sell the stock. I did I did actually yeah, I did actually write buy the cars, sell the stock the other day.

Daniel Gold (20:44.556)
Yeah, it’s a good strategy. But I think the the kind of the to me the most important message is, you know, don’t hide away from the fact that you lose some money on investments. I think that’s not a a l that that’s not a a failure. You know, people have to take risks in order to succeed. And losing is part of that process.

Richard Berry (21:04.096)
I sometimes a very important part of the process, isn’t it?

Daniel Gold (21:06.356)
It is. You le you learn from it and you know, as part of any diverse portfolio, you’re gonna have winners and losers. Yeah. Pretending that losers don’t exist is just not reality.

Richard Berry (21:16.62)
And diversification, diversification, diversification. And don’t don’t don’t be scared. It’ll all be all all right in the long run if you’re diversified enough. You just invest in everything in the long run. You’ll be you’ll be fine. So so that’s the key lesson, that’s the key tip you’d give investors in the future.

Daniel Gold (21:33.51)
Absolutely. Diversification is one of your most powerful tools you can have access to. And our thesis is that it’s quite hard to do that on your own, but following a quant approach, you know, algorithmically, you can make that much more simple and much more high quality and autonomous.

Richard Berry (21:53.072)
How diversified our portfolios on Stratify?

Daniel Gold (21:56.204)
We try and target up to thirty stocks, but it depends on the portfolio size. So we let people invest into a strategy from a hundred pounds to make it accessible. And it’s a bit more challenging to reach that many stocks with such a small portfolio.

Richard Berry (22:10.958)
Mm-hmm. No, I had a look. I was playing I was playing playing about on it this morning and I think one of the one of the strongest messages investment platforms can can send is is projected returns. Because I think people often, particularly people that are new to investing, confuse saving and investing and think saving is safe and investing is is terrifying. But having that message, particularly on your app, with the these are your projected returns over

over ten years with steady regular investments like

Daniel Gold (22:41.746)
Yeah, I know it’s it’s a powerful message and I think the the message is sometimes lost. You know, saving isn’t less risky than investing sometimes. You know, if you’re saving getting two percent a year and the the base rate or inflation is four percent, you’re actually losing money continuously even though it doesn’t feel like it. And so your opportunity to catch up with inflation or exceed it is by investing, you know, taking advantage of dividend yields income.

and capital appreciation.

Richard Berry (23:13.74)
And what have we got to look forward to in the future for Stratify? Have we got any interesting features?

Daniel Gold (23:18.528)
Yeah, we’ve got a huge amount coming. I mean, we’re very early stage having launched a year ago, and so that means we’re very early in terms of our product development. We’re looking at introducing model portfolios in the next few weeks, and then a broader range of assets on the platform, ETFs. This week we’re going to be launching Bold, which is a new crypto product, so very topical for this. so that’s Bitcoin in the same ETF.

Richard Berry (23:43.01)
Golden.

Daniel Gold (23:46.45)
so that’s a very inus innovative product brought to the market by twenty one shares, our partner. And so we’re seeing huge interest in that and we’re keen to get that out ASAP. and then, you know, longer term there’s other type of tax wrappers, p pension SIPs, we’re looking at and treasury products. So there’s a huge amount we’re working on. Yeah.

Richard Berry (24:09.676)
I really like the look of bold. I think that’s quite a good you know, if you’re interested in that wealth preservation category, it’s quite a nice hedge against against both of them because you know when one is volatile the other one perhaps isn’t, and when there’s a flight to safety, then you get the you you get that push. let’s finish with book recommendations. We ask we ask this of of everyone. is there a book that’s changed your life when it comes to investing?

Daniel Gold (24:39.734)
so I’ve got a probably a bit of an unusual book recommendation. I’m not really into investing books or self-help books that much. I just personally I prefer you know fiction type books and that’s what I’ve mostly read, so that’s what I can talk about. But I think they do have an impact on your attitude to life and and investing. So it’s very litfield, but I’d go for The Castle by Kafka.

Because it’s a very kind of dystopian type book and you know, it feels like you’re in a kind of endless bureaucracy working against you at every turn. And so personally I was going for this approval of the FCA to get this platform live and going through that process I could identify with what Kafka was writing about and i it it felt like we were going through a process that was kind of similar in some sense. Okay. so that’s

But it i it’s also a story about resilience and and pushing forward and you need that as an entrepreneur or an investor. Excellent.

Richard Berry (25:44.906)
There is a bit of a narrative you hear somewhere where retail traders and investors think the whole world is against them. They think there’s a big conspiracy where hedge funds and market makers are only out to get them. Do you subscribe to that or do you think do you think the market is against investors or do you think it’s with investors?

Daniel Gold (26:04.384)
I don’t think the market’s against investors. I’m I don’t believe in these sort of conspiracy theories. I think there are particular trades where you have certain, you know, hedge funds which long or short the market try and take advantage or arbitrage a certain position. But those are are not the the the kind of the the mainstream situation. I think that’s kind of a the exception rather than the rule. on the whole, I think you can you know

take advantage of the opportunities in the market and they aren’t as obscure as you might think. You know, we’re seeing that from the performance we’re seeing from our longest longer running strategies. We’ve achieved some very good performances over one to two years now. And if the market was arbitraging all those positions away, that wouldn’t be possible. So we’re proving it empirically.

Richard Berry (26:58.744)
So there you go. The market’s not against retail investors. it’s for you. Let’s finish with people that are interested in getting stratify. how do they sign up? Where should they go?

Daniel Gold (27:12.558)
So you can get stratify on the App Store or the Google Play Store. So just search for Stratify with a PHY. And you can find us on LinkedIn and our website is www.stratify.io.

Richard Berry (27:28.334)
Okay. Well, excellent. Dan, thank you very much for joining us. It was really interesting to hear about Stratify and what’s gonna happen in the future, particularly for those that are interested in tax-free crypto investing. If you’ve used stratify, if you’re a stratify customer, or if you go on to use stratify, please let us know what you think. just google good money guide stratify or go to good money guide and type in stratify and leave a review. Thank you very much.