No place for cryptocurrency in tax-sheltered retirement savings plans

The cryptocurrency industry’s concerted lobbying effort to leave the financial fringes and enter the money mainstream is working.

For instance, Vice President JD Vance cheered the growth of cryptocurrencies.

“We want our fellow Americans to know that crypto and digital assets, and particularly bitcoin, are part of the mainstream economy and are here to stay,” he said at a Bitcoin conference in Las Vegas on May 28.

President Donald Trump hosted a dinner with wealthy crypto investors at his golf club in Virginia on May 22. The dinner was a reward for the biggest buyers of Trump’s memecoin launched before his inauguration. Trump’s media company said it would invest $2.5 billion in Bitcoin, the best-known cryptocurrency.

The most important signal from a personal finance point of view (and the impetus behind this column) is a recent move from the Trump administration’s Department of Labor. It cancelled guidance the previous administration had issued that warned the retirement ecosystem of professionals to show “extreme care before they consider adding a cryptocurrency option to a 401(k) plan’s investment menu.” The Department of Labor is now “neutral” on the decision.

The momentum is unmistakable. My concern involves the risk to future living standards if it becomes easy to place cryptocurrency bets in retirement plans. Some plans already offer 401(k) participants a crypto option, but the inroads have been insignificant. Cryptocurrency promoters want greater access to the more than $12 trillion in employer-based defined-contribution retirement plans.

Don’t fall for the siren song of cryptocurrencies in retirement portfolios (and that admonition includes employers sponsoring the plans). Crypto is a volatile asset with no legitimate economic purpose.

“First, their anonymity makes them the currency-of-choice for scammers and thieves, and second, cryptocurrency speculators can trade them with each other and in so doing, quickly make — and lose — a lot of money,” write economists Jared Bernstein and Ryan Cummings in a recent analysis.

Tax-sheltered retirement savings plans are designed to encourage saving through the long haul. The basic strategy that has been shown to work: Keep fees low; trade infrequently; diversify with quality stocks, bonds and cash; and maximize the employer match. The evidence is convincing that speculating and trading in volatile assets is hazardous to future wealth.

Of course, gambling can be fun. Someday, cryptocurrencies might even offer genuine economic value and utility. Go ahead and trade cryptocurrencies, memecoins, electronic trading cards and similar digital assets if you want.

Just not in your tax-sheltered retirement savings plan.

Chris Farrell is senior economics contributor for “Marketplace” and a commentator for Minnesota Public Radio.