Top retirement-plan provider Fidelity is offering a bitcoin option for its 401(k) plans as investor appetite for cryptocurrency grows

• Fidelity is planning to offer 401(k) savers an option to invest in bitcoin later this year.
• The top retirement account provider is embracing cryptocurrency as it grows into the mainstream.

Fidelity Investments will allow customers to invest in bitcoin with their 401(k) plans later this year, becoming the first major retirement-plan provider to embrace cryptocurrency as a savings vehicle.

Customers will be able to put up to 20% of their savings into bitcoin, with other cryptocurrencies likely to be added later, the Wall Street Journal first reported.

Fidelity is the largest US retirement-plan provider, with 23,000 companies using it to administer their plans. Those employers will decide if their workers can have a bitcoin option. If they do, the companies can also lower the threshold of savings put into bitcoin.

Fidelity already has some footing in the crypto market, offering a trading platform specifically made for hedge fund investors. Fidelity manages $2.7 trillion in assets for 20 million clients.

But concerns over cryptocurrency still loom. The Justice Department said in March that cryptocurrency should be avoided in retirement accounts because the market swings are too volatile. Bitcoin has shed 40% of its value since its November high of $69,000.

The Labor Department regulates 401(k) plans sponsored by companies and has cautioned that providers should use "extreme care" before adding cryptocurrencies to their plans.

Some also see the market as still too young to know where it's going, and the US has yet to issue regulatory guidance on cryptocurrencies.

Yet big institutional investors are embracing digital assets. Ivy League heavyweights like Harvard and Yale have been dipping into cryptocurrencies since 2021 for their endowment funds.