Speaker 1: I'm Stacy Marie Ishmael, Managing editor of Crypto for Bloomberg News,
Speaker 1: and this is Bloomberg Crypto, a new daily Bloomberg I
Speaker 1: Heart podcast. It's Tuesday, June seven. Fidelity is one of
Speaker 1: the largest investment managers in the world. The firm made
Speaker 1: headlines when it announced its intention to offer clients the
Speaker 1: ability to invest in crypto through their four oh one
Speaker 1: key retirement accounts. In such a volatile environment, is it
Speaker 1: a risky bet to add digital assets to your retirement plan?
Speaker 1: Today Bloomberg Report Susan Woolly joins me to talk about
Speaker 1: the recent history of four oh one ks and crypto
Speaker 1: and why the US Labor Department is less than enthusiastic
Speaker 1: about fidelities. Move Susanne, so good to have you here.
Speaker 1: It's not often that I get to talk to someone
Speaker 1: who covers a sort of a more predictable end of
Speaker 1: the market versus the complete chaos of crypto old times.
Speaker 1: And really that's what I want to ask you today.
Speaker 1: You know, Fidelity one of the largest investment managers in
Speaker 1: the world, not an organization that you naturally think of
Speaker 1: when it comes to running towards risk, and recently announced
Speaker 1: that they were going to allow people to have exposure
Speaker 1: to crypto in there. For one case, why it is
Speaker 1: very weird big picture to have like one of the largest,
Speaker 1: the largest FUR one K plan administrator offering a product
Speaker 1: that lets you have crypto in your four oh one K,
Speaker 1: which is a workplace savings plan that you're supposed to have.
Speaker 1: You know, prudent investments in that have to be monitored
Speaker 1: and they have to be in the best interests of participants.
Speaker 1: They tend to be well vetted stock and bond funds
Speaker 1: and mutual and money market funds, things like that. So
Speaker 1: to have crypto come into the mix doesn't seem what
Speaker 1: you would expect. It's it's it's pretty wild. Actually to
Speaker 1: have Fidelity jump in it seems kind of crazy on
Speaker 1: the face of it, but when you look a little
Speaker 1: deeper into Fidelity, they've been one of the financial services
Speaker 1: companies in this space that has actually moved into crypto
Speaker 1: faster than others. They have the digital assets on they do,
Speaker 1: and they've been sort of exploring the crypto space since eighteen,
Speaker 1: which is early adopter by institutional standards, so respect So,
Speaker 1: if I I am a person with a four oh
Speaker 1: one key, thank you Bloomberg um, and I say, Okay,
Speaker 1: under what circumstances would it make sense for me to
Speaker 1: opt into something like this? It very much depends on
Speaker 1: how comfortable you are about crypto, which I would imagine
Speaker 1: is high comfortable. Um. Depends how comfortable one is with
Speaker 1: crypto and your knowledge of crypto, your ability to take risk. UM.
Speaker 1: I would argue, your your age, because crypto is so
Speaker 1: can be so volidile that if you're approaching retirement, putting
Speaker 1: a chunk of your money and crypto would be taking
Speaker 1: a big gamble. A lot of financial advisors suggest maybe,
Speaker 1: if you're going to do it, maybe one to five percent.
Speaker 1: If you talk to advisors who are sort of much
Speaker 1: more into the crypto space, they might say ten percent.
Speaker 1: Right right. Again, that risk tolerance, what are some of
Speaker 1: the other risky or let's say volatile assets that have
Speaker 1: historically been included in these sorts of retirement savings accounts.
Speaker 1: You could argue that a lot of the equity funds
Speaker 1: in retirement accounts now are pretty risky. Because we've seen
Speaker 1: even the SMP funds where people think that they're diversified
Speaker 1: among five hundred stocks, A good chunk of that index
Speaker 1: is in the megacap tech stocks like Amazon on Facebook
Speaker 1: which have been hammered. So that is supposedly a safe
Speaker 1: and diversified investment. Right now it doesn't feel that way.
Speaker 1: But generally in a four one K plan you have
Speaker 1: pretty plain vanilla. You've got your stuck all different flavors
Speaker 1: of you know, stock funds, you've got different kinds of
Speaker 1: bond funds, you've got money funds, you've got maybe an
Speaker 1: emerging markets fund, some international funds for sprinkling of flavor,
Speaker 1: little sprinkling of flavor, but really nothing like crypto. There's
Speaker 1: been some talk of maybe getting private equity. Private equity
Speaker 1: firms have wanted to get their toe hold in four
Speaker 1: one K land, and that's something to keep an eye on.
Speaker 1: So Fidelity is i would say, a first mover in
Speaker 1: the big institutional space, but there have certainly been much
Speaker 1: smaller providers who have been trying to offer similar things.
Speaker 1: What about fidelities offering seems to you to kind of
Speaker 1: thread that needle of providing some exposure to risk in
Speaker 1: potential return but also a degree of stability. Well, the
Speaker 1: way Fidelity has created the product, the individual company, the
Speaker 1: plant sponsor of the four one k can decide they
Speaker 1: can allow what people to put up to of their
Speaker 1: balance in crypto. It's unlikely that many funds will do
Speaker 1: that what some of the smaller providers have done. Um
Speaker 1: there's a company and much smaller for and cab administrator
Speaker 1: called for us all dot Com. They will allow people
Speaker 1: to put up to five percent. You can transfer five
Speaker 1: percent of your balance in and then five percent of
Speaker 1: your contributions from then on can go into crypto. There's
Speaker 1: a lot of education around this, obviously, because plant sponsors
Speaker 1: have a fiduciary duty to be sure not making stupid
Speaker 1: decisions exactly. So there's a lot of for us ALL,
Speaker 1: for example, I think you have to go through an
Speaker 1: interactive quiz before your you know, air quotes allowed invest
Speaker 1: in crypto. So it's like informed consent essentially, exactly, got it.
Speaker 1: One of my other questions about this is I noticed
Speaker 1: that the Department of Labor was not super keen yes
Speaker 1: about this headline from FINALSI why the Department of Labor?
Speaker 1: I mean they're the ones that enforced this law called ORISSA,
Speaker 1: the Employee Retirement Security Income Act. And ORISSA is the
Speaker 1: law that says you have to have prudent you know,
Speaker 1: non speculative assets, and they are I mean, what they
Speaker 1: are saying is they think crypto is speculative and vol
Speaker 1: at all. There's no broadly accepted methodology for how to
Speaker 1: value it, you know, unlike stocks and bonds, which have
Speaker 1: methodologies and academics have been studying them for decades and decades. Um,
Speaker 1: it's only been around for like thirteen years exactly. So
Speaker 1: they are sort of saying, like, give me your argument
Speaker 1: for why this is prudent. And they've been very surprisingly
Speaker 1: sort of aggressive and coming out against like in regulators speak, well,
Speaker 1: regulators speak okay, yes, okay, okay. So they had said
Speaker 1: they have grave concern right, which is the equivalence of
Speaker 1: aggressive yes in a regulatory just sort of like yeah,
Speaker 1: you're like, whoa regulator head on fire and got it?
Speaker 1: Got it? Fascinating. So, speaking of head on fire, if
Speaker 1: your you know, friends and family were to say, hey,
Speaker 1: I have the ability to put crypto in my four
Speaker 1: oh one K, what does that mean in practice? Like
Speaker 1: what would that look like for them if they were
Speaker 1: to go through the tutorial and then say yes, well
Speaker 1: with fidelities product, it'll be listed. Um, if first your
Speaker 1: company has to decide that they're going to let you
Speaker 1: get into crypto, and that is a big decision for them.
Speaker 1: Got it. So it's actually you would have to if
Speaker 1: you really wanted it, you'd have to lobby whoever your
Speaker 1: company's benefits manager and hope that your benefits managers into
Speaker 1: crypto or son or daughter this into crypto. You know,
Speaker 1: So you would go in and with Fidelity they create
Speaker 1: a digits called a Digital Assets account and they basically
Speaker 1: like create an account for your plan and you kind
Speaker 1: of get units in that plan, but it's all you daily. Um.
Speaker 1: They have some money market funds as part of it,
Speaker 1: so they can settle daily trades and you would so
Speaker 1: you would see it if you went into your foe
Speaker 1: own K providers website offering, you'd see Okay, my stuck
Speaker 1: what up this? And my big kind went up that
Speaker 1: you know, it was along with everything else. Got it?
Speaker 1: And just as a as a final question, you know,
Speaker 1: Fidelity is obviously one of the biggest and most established
Speaker 1: players in the space we talked about for us all.
Speaker 1: Do you see other of the major institutional providers kind
Speaker 1: of following in their footsteps or do you think we're
Speaker 1: still they're still an await and see. I think there's
Speaker 1: still no wait and see. I think that Fidelity is
Speaker 1: having conversations with the d OL and apartmatively the Department
Speaker 1: of labor Um. We'll see how that goes. Senator Warren
Speaker 1: is dead set against this um exactly. Yes, there's a
Speaker 1: lot of countries, so I think people are going to
Speaker 1: wait and see because this is a very conservative industry
Speaker 1: and crypto has seen, as you know, the opposite, Yes,
Speaker 1: the as folks like to call it, the wild West
Speaker 1: of crypto. Well, thank you, Suzanne. That was so helpful.
Speaker 1: I feel like I have a much better understanding of
Speaker 1: what this might mean for me. You can find more
Speaker 1: of Susan's reporting on the Bloomberg Terminal, on Bloomberg dot
Speaker 1: com and on Twitter at get This at wealth Watch.
Speaker 1: Thank you. On the next episode of Bloomberg Crypto, we
Speaker 1: tackle celebrities and n f t s. Should you put
Speaker 1: your trust in movie stars, pop singers and athletes when
Speaker 1: it comes to non fungible tokens? What are some of
Speaker 1: the legal questions? And play with the celebrity endorsements. Tomorrow
Speaker 1: a chat with Bloomberg report to missy igofa Bolo. I'm
Speaker 1: Stacy Marie Ishmael and This is Bloomberg. Crypto, a daily
Speaker 1: podcast from Bloomberg and I Heeart Radio. From more shows
Speaker 1: from I Heeart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Email your comments, questions,
Speaker 1: or suggestions to Crypto at Bloomberg dot net. Follow us
Speaker 1: on Twitter at Crypto. The pre user and editor of
Speaker 1: this episode is Vicky Vergelina. Our engineer is Desto wonder
Speaker 1: At original music by Leo Sidron. Bloomberg's head of Podcasts
Speaker 1: is Francesca Leavy