Should You Add Bitcoin to Your 401(k) Retirement Plan?
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Here's your money briefing for Wednesday, May 4th. I'm J.R. Whelan for The Wall Street Journal. We know that Bitcoin is among the riskiest investment choices in the market today. So does it belong in your 401k? Well, soon workers whose employers use Fidelity to administer the retirement plans will have that option.
Bitcoin is very volatile. It's lost about 40% of its value since last November. Is that something that you as an investor can withstand having in your portfolio?
Our retirement reporter Anne Turgason has been talking with financial experts about Fidelity's decision how Bitcoin could fit into a 401k and questions you should ask before opting in. That's after the break.
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Later this year, the nation's largest 401k provider, Fidelity Investments, plans to let retirement savers add Bitcoin to their portfolios. So is that something you should consider for your retirement nest egg? WSJ retirement reporter Anne Turgason joins us to discuss. Anne, thanks for being here. Thank you. So Anne, Fidelity is the first major retirement plan provider to give employers the option to offer Bitcoin as one of their 401k investment choices. Why are they doing this?
The industry in which they exist in the 401k space, which is to provide administrative services to 401k plans, that's a pretty competitive industry. And so, you know, I think the difference between one record keeper and another isn't so pronounced. So I think this is a way for Fidelity to kind of stand out from the pack. They also very early on, you know, for the last several years, they have been investing in sort of understanding the cryptocurrency markets better. And they actually have an institutional cryptocurrency exchange platform. And so, you know, they've been sort of a leader in that area. And I think this enables them to try to stand out and stand out as a leader in an area that they think is poised for a lot of growth.
So does this mean that anybody with a Fidelity retirement account will be able to start adding Bitcoin?
No, it doesn't mean that. So there are about 23,000 companies that are customers of Fidelity in the 401k space. What Fidelity is doing is giving those companies the option of adding Bitcoin to their 401k menus. It doesn't mean those companies have to offer it. And in fact, probably a lot of them will not choose to offer it. So I think for most people whose companies use Fidelity as a 401k administrator, they're probably not going to see Bitcoin pop up on their 401k menu, but some will.
So what's likely to go into a company's decision process about whether to include this as an option?
I think there might be some companies that would choose to offer this as a way to attract and retain workers. You know, maybe people, maybe younger workers, maybe they feel that this is something that's going to be a competitive advantage for them. But when you think about whether companies are going to adopt this or not, you also have to consider that companies have what's called a fiduciary responsibility to manage their 401k plans.
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