Cryptocurrency as an investment option is slowly making its way into retirement plans. SkyBridge Capital’s Anthony Scaramucci recently made the case and San Francisco-based retirement investment platform ForUsAll introduced the “Alt 401(k)” on Monday, its platform that allows employers to include alternative investment options within 401k plans.
Retirement plan advisors have strong feelings either for or against cryptocurrency in defined contribution investment menus, and now count Donald Trump in the latter camp.
On Tuesday, the former president called Bitcoin a “scam,” telling Fox Business Network’s Stuart Varney it competes against the dollar and therefore he’s not a fan.
“Bitcoin, it just seems like a scam,” Trump said. “I don’t like it because it’s another currency competing against the dollar.”
Noting that during his administration it was at $6,000 and “much lower,” he added “I want the dollar to be the currency of the world. That’s what I’ve always said.”
The comment sent Bitcoin tumbling in the ensuing 24 hours, falling 10.05% to end at $32,095.61, according to Coinbase. It recovered 15.59% by midday Wednesday to $36, 752.81, but far short of it’s over $60,000 value earlier this year.
Scaramucci speaks
“It was the best-performing asset over the last 10 years, and I predict it will be the best-performing asset over the next 10 years,” Scaramucci recently said.
Money is simply bartering technology, moving from seashells to silver coins, paper to electronic digits, and now Bitcoin, the latest innovation, he argued.
“Bitcoin is the latest technological frontier—a monetary network in the same way that Amazon is a retail network, Google a search network, and Facebook a social network. And it’s decentralized, as opposed to the near-monopoly the others enjoy in their space. It makes it even more compelling “because nobody has control of it. The result is millions of people that are involved, hundreds of thousands of nodes, and I take a lot of comfort in that.”