Labor Ends Biden Policy in Move to Allow Bitcoin in 401Ks
The U.S. Department of Labor announced an unwinding of a Biden administration policy of discouraging fiduciaries from including cryptocurrency investments in retirement plans.
The U.S. Department of Labor announced an unwinding of a Biden administration policy of discouraging fiduciaries from including cryptocurrency investments in retirement plans.
"The Biden administration's Department of Labor made a choice to put their thumb on the scale," Secretary of Labor Lori Chavez-DeRemer wrote in a statement Wednesday. "We're rolling back this overreach and making it clear that investment decisions should be made by fiduciaries, not D.C. bureaucrats."
Biden's policy directed retirement plans to exercise "extreme care" before adding cryptocurrency to investment menus, and President Donald Trump's Labor Department argues the language deviated from the requirements of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act and marked a departure from the department's historically neutral, principled-based approach to fiduciary investment decisions.
"By rescinding the 2022 guidance, the department reaffirms its neutral stance, neither endorsing, nor disapproving of, plan fiduciaries who conclude that the inclusion of cryptocurrency in a plan's investment menu is appropriate," the department wrote in the announcement that comes amid the Bitcoin conference this week in Las Vegas.