Crypto In Your 401(k)?

Just because you may soon be able to buy Bitcoin in your workplace retirement plan doesn’t mean you should.

- KERRI ANNE RENZULLI

MILLIONS OF RETIREMENT SAVERS MAY SOON be able to invest in Bitcoin as easily as they now buy stocks and bonds, following an announcement last month from Fidelity Investments, the nation’s largest retirement-plan provider, that it will add cryptocurrency as an option to the 401(k) plans it offers companies later this year.

“This will be remembered as a seminal moment in the evolution of crypto,” says financial advisor Ric Edelman, founder of the Digital Assets Council of Financial Professionals and author of The Truth About Crypto. “For the average American worker, their only place to save for retirement is through a company retirement plan. Millions of workers will now start to buy Bitcoin who never would have otherwise.”

Just because you can buy cryptocurrency in your retirement plan—whether in the future via your 401(k) or now in an IRA—doesn’t mean you should, though. While investing in Bitcoin, Ethereum and other digital currencies can help diversify your savings and possibly hedge against inflation and boost overall returns, financial advisors say anything more than a small stake is risky for a long-term goal like retirement given how wild the price swings can be.

The trick is to find that sweet spot.

Even before Fidelity’s decision to add Bitcoin to its 401(k) menu, interest in crypto as a investment for retirement had been rising sharply, especially among younger savers. A survey last month by Investopedia, for example, found that one in four millennials say they are relying on crypto to help fund their retirement.