Bitcoin in your retirement plan. Would you?

Coinbase is teaming up with an investment platform for small and medium businesses to offer crypto investment options in 401ks.

Investments are capped at 5% of your portfolio.

Would you participate?

Yes, and No.
Yes, if I had the UK equivalent of a 401K - but NO because I have never subscribed to the idea that the government tells you what IS and what IS NOT a “safe investment vehicle” and uses tax incentives to ram home their point. When I was 16 years old, I had an argument with my Aunt, and it went like this:

When I am 65, the government will not have any money (either from funding future pension requirements or from future taxes of employed people) to pay me a pension unless the power of compounding is used to fiat away the real value of my lifetime contributions. Therefore, I will pay the absolute legal minimum in contributions since I consider personal income taxation to be the biggest scam in history perpetrated by those who should know better on those who do not know better and put their trust in “people a lot smarter than they are”.

We have in fact put 3% of our wealth into crypt investment as of end of last year, but with no middlemen involved. If I die poor, it will be my fault. If 98% of good, honest, hard working people die poor because their government has hoodwinked them into a future of retirement that nobody can guarantee, I feel for them. For sure they will have someone to blame (who is probably dead by that time), but it will not stop them being poor.

Eight years ago I administered my Aunt’s will and had to trace thousands of bank shares since she held certificates. There had been a 97% loss on those shareholdings during the 2008 financial crisis, and they were worth less than £500 in total. She also had a “mutual fund” paying £20 per month in dividend. If my 401K equivalent is going to deliver such outstanding returns (joke) it is not worth the time spent on tracking its value.

1 Like