By Alicia Maher
As usual, many people planning their retirement prefer to invest in safe-haven investment options such as government bonds and their traditional investment options. But, this perspective is now being challenged due to the growing popularity of the crypto space.
Crypto investment is fast gaining popularity such that many traditional financial institutions have started offering crypto-related exposure to their customers. Hence, it isn’t any surprise that the asset management firm (Fidelity) is following such steps. The firm has announced that its now offering a crypto investment option for those who won’t mind having a crypto investment portfolio as part of their retirement plans.
Terms And Benefits Of Fidelity’s Crypto Retirement Plan
Even though Fidelity is widely acknowledged as the biggest retirement planner across the US, the firm wants to enable crypto investment for its teeming client base. Part of the announcement states that including BTC investment in the employee’s retirement portfolio is the only available crypto option right now; it plans to enable other cryptos before the year ends.
Fidelity further revealed that employees have a choice on which cryptos they want in their retirement portfolio. While speaking with the local media outlet, NYT, David Gray (one of Fidelity’s top-level executives) said, “many of our customers have been asking us for a crypto-related retirement plan for many years, and we have been considering for some time now before we finally developed this plan.”
“With our investment option, our customers could include any crypto (even if it’s BTC) in their retirement portfolio without needing to open another account with a crypto exchange,” Gray added. However, the firm revealed it would charge a 0.8% service fee for each deposit into its crypto retirement portfolio. Fidelity further revealed it would charge a separate fee for other transactions asides from deposits but assured that this charge would be minimal.
Microstrategy Already Invests In Fidelity’s Offering
Gray further said that MicroStrategy has already invested in this plan, and he added that he isn’t surprised, given that the company’s CEO Michael Saylor is a huge BTC advocate. Nearly all of MicroStrategy’s investment strategy is to buy and hold BTC.
This investment option is Fidelity’s third crypto-related offering after recently announcing that it would soon launch its range of crypto offerings. The first was a spot ETP which was launched for the Europe community. At 0.76%, the total expense ratio (TER) of that spot BTC ETP makes it the lowest-priced BTC ETP worldwide. Their second offering was the FDIG and FMET crypto offering geared towards the gen. Z generation.
Skybridge Follows Fidelity’s Footsteps
After Fidelity’s announcement, Anthony Scaramucci (Skybridge’s CEO) tweeted that Skybridge will soon make a similar offer available for its customers. Before this announcement, Scaramucci had earlier revealed that his company would soon be a full-fledged crypto firm and no longer a hedge fund firm. The firm already has a sizeable crypto portfolio.
.@SkyBridge will offer #Bitcoin as part of its 401k program as soon as it is available. Stay tuned.
— Anthony Scaramucci (@Scaramucci) April 26, 2022