Reddit Posts
Lawmakers, DOL battle over whether 401(k)s should have crypto investments
Is Bitcoin coming to all 401ks soon?
Fidelity's cryptocurrency plan raises alarm at DOL
New DOL Crypto Guidance Rewrites Rules on 401(k) Brokerage Windows
DOL issues a warning about cryptocurrency in your 401k
Mentions
Clearly this lawsuit won't succeed. The more interesting story however is what happens if Fidelity plows on with it's plan to offer crypto investment plans, given they will be in breach of fiduciary duty based on the DOL guidance (and thus will be able to be sued when people inevitably lose money on their crypto retirement component).
tldr; A Florida Republican has introduced the Financial Freedom Act into the US House of Representatives to prevent the Department of Labor from limiting the types of investments that can be included in 401(k) retirement plans. The bill is the companion to Alabama Sen. Tommy Tuberville’s May 5 Senate bill. It was introduced as a reaction to a DOL compliance report dated March 10 that raised objections to the inclusion of cryptocurrencies. *This summary is auto generated by a bot and not meant to replace reading the original article. As always, DYOR.*
My two satoshis: 1. This was basically a well written letter by Fidelity - there are some other things that could have been said, but I think they tailored and limited it considering the limited worldview of the intended recipient. 2. Apart from this, there is a Congressperson, Byron Donalds, who introduced a bill which is intended to protect the use of bitcoin (and various cryptocurrencies) in retirement accounts - [the initial bill's text as released (not yet numbered) is here](https://donalds.house.gov/uploadedfiles/financial_freedom_act_bill_text.pdf). According to a page which describes this bill, "Original co-sponsors of this legislation include: Representatives Warren Davidson (OH-08), Young Kim (CA-39), David Schweikert (AZ-06), and Tom Emmer (MN-06)." It appears the bill has been titled "The Financial Freedom Act" and it "is in response to March 10th regulatory guidance released by the Employee Benefits Security Administration, an agency inside of the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL). The guidance attempts to bar 401(k) investors from investing in cryptocurrency and undermines the ability of 401(k) plans to offer brokerage windows, which give retirement plan participants the ability to personally control how their assets are invested. The guidance threatened that employers and investment firms could be subject to a DOL investigation and enforcement actions should they allow individuals using brokerage windows to invest in cryptocurrency. This legislation would empower retirement savers to invest as they see fit and ensure that plan sponsors and financial firms are not punished for allowing investors to exercise financial freedom. On May 5, 2022, Senator Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) introduced identical legislation in the United States Senate." 3. O.K, three satoshis. Here's my third satoshi on this subject: It's worth noting that people have been using bitcoin (and other crypto systems for that matter) as / in lieu of ordinary retirement systems for years. I personally know very few people who no longer know anything about bitcoin and the number who don't own some are dwinding (although there are still plenty who don't own any). My own father owns some. When your parents and / or grandparents own it, and banks and institutions have gotten into it, I'd say it's fairly mainstream. People have it in their hardware wallets, there are some people who have 401k operating agreements or IRA LLCs they use to set up business accounts on exchanges and handle it themselves (this has been going on for I don't know how many years), and there is nothing illegal about it. It's just people managing their own assets. And there are various organizations that have specialized services such as iTrustCapital, BitcoinIRA (these two are IRA service related, and have been operating for a long time), or [Forusall](https://www.forusall.com/pricing) (an example of a crypto 401k service in development), and of course Fidelity (which now is offering the ability to have bitcoin in 401k, but **has been accepting bitcoin since 2015!**); this latest development is probably triggering the administration because it instantly means adoption for all employers as Fidelity Investments is in fact the largest 401(k) custodian in the United States. But the U.S. government is in denial if they think they can stop Fidelity (or anyone else for that matter) from keeping bitcoin in custody (in any form - self custody or any other sort of custody) for whatever end - be it retirement or any other matter. Rep. Byron Donalds was right, stating that with respect to the Department of Labor's reaction, that **“This administration, as well as any other government entity, lacks the authority to direct the financial future of America’s investors."**
> What are the specific volatility and loss risks posed by Bitcoin, and how will Fidelity address these risks? Modern Portfolio Theory. > What are the specific fraud risks posed by Bitcoin, and how will Fidelity address these risks? What are the specific theft risks posed by Bitcoin, and how will Fidelity address these risks? What fraud risk? > How will Fidelity address the additional Bitcoin risks identified by DOL, including the challenge for plan participants to make informed investment Informed? With facts or bullshit? > What fees will your customers incur if they decide to invest in Bitcoin? Whatever fees we decide. > How much has Fidelity earned from crypto mining activities since the establishment of its mining operation? You can find out in our filings. > When Fidelity made its decision to allow sales of Bitcoin in retirement accounts, how did the company address its own conflicts of interest, given that the company now is both a Bitcoin miner and a purveyor of Bitcoin? There is no conflict of interest. It's a decentralised system, mining gives no power over the network.
I agree with this despite being super bullish on btc (bought a ton today). You don’t want btc in 401ks. I’m a successful financial advisor for about 15 years. 401ks require a “fiduciary standard” and are overseen and regulated by FINRA, SEC, ERISA, and DOL. You want all this shit in with Bitcoin? Defi what?
​ >In order to better understand how Fidelity arrived at the decision to expose retirement accounts to the risks inherent in Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, we request answers to the following questions by May 18, 2022: > >1. Why did Fidelity ignore DOL’s “serious concerns regarding the prudence of a fiduciary’s decision to expose a 401(k) plan's participants to direct investments in cryptocurrencies”22? > >2. What risks does Fidelity assess that Bitcoin presents to its customers? > >a. What are the specific volatility and loss risks posed by Bitcoin, and how will Fidelity address these risks? > >b. What are the specific fraud risks posed by Bitcoin, and how will Fidelity address these risks? What are the specific theft risks posed by Bitcoin, and how will Fidelity address these risks? > >c. How will Fidelity address the additional Bitcoin risks identified by DOL,including the challenge for plan participants to make informed investment decisions, custodial and record keeping concerns, valuation concerns, and the evolving regulatory environment? > >3. What fees will your customers incur if they decide to invest in Bitcoin? > >4. How much has Fidelity earned from cryptomining activities since the establishment of its mining operation? > >5. When Fidelity made its decision to allow sales of Bitcoin in retirement accounts, how did the company address its own conflicts of interest, given that the company now is both a Bitcoin miner and a purveyor of Bitcoin? My question to the Bitcoin community is this: Why do we continue to allow these misleading titles to make us look like knee-jerk reactionary fools instead of critical thinkers? Why are we OK with people purposefully misconstruing the contents of an article to support their own political bias at our expense? She wants to know the risks involved in adding Bitcoin to retirement accounts given its historic volitity and what Fidelity is doing to mitigate those risks. And it is risky. What's the most common advice people give on this subreddit? *Don't invest more than you can afford to lose*. How many people can afford to lose a significant part of their retirement? Look what happened to people forced to retire following '08 whose 401ks were devalued by 20%-50%. It crippled their twilight years. Some of them are still working.
I had the same idea, that the goverment and banks probably will create their own "$DOL" ($Dollar) Cryptocurrency. The worst part about it is that this is actually centralized, so one major point for crypto is gone. The next extremely terrifying idea is that, since they have the source code, THEY can literally control EVERYTHING. The could decide to make transactions intransparent, they could send, add, remove money and transactions either visible or invisible and simply do whatever they want! Printing money? Haha, easier than before! And no one can stop, control or see whats happening. And the way people using crypto right now, is clearly telling me that people are stupid enough to actualy get depended on this new bank controlled crypto currency. Imagine Paypal and banks can simply say "Nope, we froze your accounts, you can't get anything out there." Now multiply this by 10. If you think WW3 is bad, wait for it.
https://subscriptions.hookedonphonics.com/enhanced/combo?vc=HPG1&pc=SHPGBR&utm_campaign=DOL&utm_medium=S&fnl=v4&ispa=true&gc_id=184380999&h_ad_id=461088326533&gclid=Cj0KCQjwxtSSBhDYARIsAEn0thSPpo9IxukIHTTvtUxMgoH-RfWYktRQVYNpaXmcQdHzn6dvF7Dto2AaAhFQEALw_wcB If you live in a group home and are on high needs case management (which seems highly likely), please only use internet connected devices with staff supervision from now on. Cheers buddy.
Curious how this fits with the DOL fiduciary rules and ERISA. If this becomes a thing, I'm guessing your options are limited to institutional mutual funds use crypto investing strategies.
tldr; The Department of Labor (DOL) has expressed concerns about the use of crypto currency in 401(k) retirement plans. The DOL is concerned about the risks associated with cryptocurrencies more than any possible return. According to the DOL, 401(K) accounts containing cryptocurrencies could be subject to fraud and theft contributing to significant financial losses. *This summary is auto generated by a bot and not meant to replace reading the original article. As always, DYOR.*
We’re light years ahead of China, ok - just 145 years… We abolished slavery.. They raised wages to about $1.76/hr And they have no real DOL, OSHA, EPA, etc
We shall see. I don't take anything on spec until I see the correlation statistics from the DOL on rising rates > unemployment > CPI. Everything at this point is subjective until we see data that reflects that. We're living in an America where technology is rapidly replacing manual labor in the limited areas where it exists in the blue collar areas and the service industries are incredibly understaffed, but also disorganized right now. There are a lot of moving parts to this system and I'm not going to take his word for it until I start to see the data.
Except we already have ways to prove ownership of those things, and more importantly, those ways involve registration with a central authority who can enforce that ownership. You can make an NFT of whatever you want right now, I could make one saying I own my neighbors house, but decentralized means that nobody gives a shit and it's not legally enforceable because there is no central authority who recognizes it. Having registration on the blockchain is completely pointless compared to say, the DOL database, since only one of those matters.