MicroStrategy Becomes First Public Company To Offer Workers Access To Bitcoin Retirement Plans

Enterprise software maker MicroStrategy announced Tuesday it plans to allow its employees to retire on bitcoin via Fidelity’s new BTC 401(k) program.

MicroStrategy Offers Bitcoin As 401(k) Investment Option To Its Employees

MicroStrategy has unveiled a bitcoin option for 401(k) plans for its employees.

“As MicroStrategy continues to be a pioneer in bitcoin for corporations, we are planning to offer our employees the option to invest in bitcoin as part of their 401K portfolio,” MicroStrategy founder and CEO Michael Saylor said in a tweet today.

By working with retirement giant Fidelity, MicroStrategy will become the world’s first publicly listed company to allow its workers to invest in the pioneer cryptocurrency as part of their 401(k) savings account.

The announcement by MicroStrategy came shortly after Fidelity, America’s largest retirement-plan provider, said it will let its clients add bitcoin to their 401(k) retirement accounts. In the United States, 401(k) accounts help employees get tax breaks on the contributions they make from their paychecks towards retirement. Employers that decide to offer the option will be able to allocate no more than 20% of their employees’ funds to the dominant crypto.

The Growing Legitimization Of Bitcoin

Fidelity’s new program is expected to go live later this year. The move is a further indication that bitcoin is gaining trust as an investment despite the asset’s extreme trepidation.

Speaking to CNBC, Saylor noted that his employees had requested a bitcoin option in their 401(k) accounts for a while. “Bitcoin is digital property and that makes it the perfect asset for a retirement plan,” the noted bitcoin proselytizer posited.

In Saylor’s view, the OG crypto is less risky compared to stocks, bonds, real estate, and gold, and it was in fact “built for this”.

Saylor is best known in the crypto community for his unshakeable conviction in the flagship crypto. Under his leadership, MicroStrategy has become the world’s largest corporate bitcoin owner. The company currently holds 129,218 coins — nearly $5 billion — on its balance sheet.

However, not everyone in the U.S. is celebrating bitcoin being a part of 401(k) plans. Last month, the Department of Labor expressed “serious concerns” about providers giving investors the chance to allocate a portion of their retirement savings to “speculative and volatile” crypto assets with inflated valuations.

Bitcoin was trading at $38,661 at the time of publication and was down 5.33 percent in the past 24 hours.