Money Box Live: Understanding Crypto

Money Box

BBC

Business

4.2 • 804 Ratings

🗓️ 21 October 2025

⏱️ 28 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Cryptocurrencies, like Bitcoin, are a type of digital money that has proliferated in recent years. They are mostly unconnected to governments or central banks. Some people treat them as an investment, some people as a bit of a flutter, and many more people don't yet know anything about them at all.

We look at how they work and how the regulatory landscape is changing with the UK's financial regulator the Financial Conduct Authority currently consulting on a range of proposals. It could mean crypto-related firms will be covered by the same requirements as traditional financial firms, boosting consumer protections.

It comes as Action Fraud, which is the UK's national reporting centre for cybercrime, says crypto-related scams jumped by 16% last year. In fact, it accounted for two thirds of all investment fraud reports.

Felicity Hannah is joined by Kate Baucherel, a digital strategy consultant specialising in emerging technologies like crypto, and Louise Abbott, a partner at Keystone Law with a focus on fraud, crypto and asset recovery.

Presenter: Felicity Hannah Producers: James Graham Editor: Jess Quayle Senior News Editor: Sara Wadeson

(This episode was first broadcast at 3pm on Radio 4 on Wednesday the 24th of September 2025).

Transcript

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0:00.0	BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, podcasts.
0:07.3	Welcome back to the home of the oxymoron.
0:10.5	Evil genius.
0:11.6	He asked the newspaper to print his obituary early so he'd enjoy it.
0:15.5	That's like hiding at your own funeral.
0:17.1	Yeah, a bit great gig.
0:18.6	I'm Russell Kane.
0:19.6	Join me to weigh in on whether the biggest players in history are more evil or genius. Becoming that rich, I'd say that is some level of genius. It also helps it. It's a long time ago, right? It's like the podcast version of telling your kids the ice cream van plays music when it's out of ice cream. Listen to Evil Genius on BBC Sounds.
0:41.7	Hello, in today's Moneybox Live podcast, we're looking at cryptocurrencies.
0:46.3	They are one of the biggest financial developments of the century so far.
0:50.0	We get so many questions and queries about them in the Moneybox inbox.
0:53.1	So today we're going to answer as many as we can.
0:56.8	We will tell you what crypto is and what it isn't.
0:58.2	Because crypto is big.
0:59.3	It's complicated.
1:03.3	And when it goes wrong or there are scammers, it can really cause problems.
1:05.9	I lost £250,000.
1:07.8	I lost friendships.
1:09.6	I lost dignity.
1:12.6	I lost so much more than just the money. We'll be hearing more of Chris's story later in the podcast.
1:15.6	Now, the Financial Conduct Authority says that about 12% of UK adults owned crypto in 2024.
1:22.6	That is a pretty big jump from 2021 when the number was just 4%.
	...

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