As digital assets evolve, so does the way people can hold them. For decades, an IRA (Individual Retirement Account) was a place for stocks and funds. That's changing. IRAs now offer ownership
As digital assets evolve, so does the way people can hold them. For decades, an IRA (Individual Retirement Account) was a place for stocks and funds. That's changing. IRAs now offer ownership of digital assets and a good deal more, and a handful of platforms are pushing that shift forward.
Many brokerages let you hold a crypto ETF inside an IRA, but that isn't the same as owning the underlying asset. Platforms like Unchained and Retired.com are building out a different model: direct ownership of a wide range of assets within a tax-advantaged account.
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Unchained offers Bitcoin holdings in both traditional and Roth IRAs through what it calls collaborative custody. Most people who self-custody Bitcoin do it alone, carrying every decision and risk themselves.
Unchained's setup instead stores your Bitcoin in a multisig vault that requires two of three keys to open: you hold two, Unchained holds one. The company says it cannot touch your assets on its own, but the third key acts as a safety net if you lose one of yours.
According to Jeff Vandrew, Unchained's chief legal officer and the creator of its IRA product, the appeal for Bitcoin-native investors is the security model itself, which he describes as unusually robust for the market. He adds that many customers, whether it's their first time holding Bitcoin or their tenth, come specifically looking for a security-first approach.
Vandrew also argues Unchained has an edge as traditional brokerages enter the space on improving regulatory clarity. Those brokers, he says, are "unlikely to match Unchained's unique multi-signature based security model that provides on-chain insight and key control to its accountholders." The platform also offers a legacy plan for passing coins to heirs.
Retired.com started as a crypto IRA in 2016 and has since broadened into a single account that can hold gold, real estate, private deals, and public markets. Its "Bring Your Own Deal" feature lets a client place a real estate deal or private placement they've sourced themselves inside the same IRA.
Its core client isn't who many assume. According to Steven Coufal, the company's vice president of organic growth, most clients already have a 401(k) or IRA elsewhere and come looking to diversify rather than bet everything on crypto, though some crypto-native clients do want the tax advantages of an IRA wrapper. The majority, he says, are traditional retirement savers "expanding what diversification means to them, not abandoning it."
That's the larger idea Coufal points to. In a conventional IRA, diversification means large-cap versus small-cap, or U.S. versus international. He sees portfolios moving toward "diversification within asset classes, not just within one."
Historically, holding several asset types in a tax-advantaged account meant multiple custodians and heavy paperwork; with them under one roof, he says, the question shifts to "which asset classes, and how much of each."
As asset classes evolve, so does how investors hold and gain exposure to them. Unchained and Retired.com represent two versions of that shift, one focused on secure Bitcoin ownership, the other on breadth across digital and hard assets, both aimed at broadening what an IRA can hold.
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