• peeonyou [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    3 days ago

    what do you mean? as soon as 401ks go into crypto there are gonna be some massive rug pulls and that will be the end of that? i dunno… crypto is sketchy as fuck

    • RION [she/her]@hexbear.net
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      3 days ago

      This relies on people actually going out and buying ruinous amounts of crypto in their 401ks, which I don’t see happening en masse. Most people just set and forget on a single target date fund, probably the Qualified Default Investment Alternative for their plan. Even if the Department of Labor were to do away with the current regulations on QDIA diversification and option type to get people into crypto by default, we’d also need to see plan administrators who even want to do that, and I don’t think we’re going to see that from the likes of Fidelity and Vanguard.

      • Lyudmila [she/her, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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        3 days ago

        This is not about individuals gaining the ability to use their pre-tax 401k dollars to buy crypto, it’s specifically giving fund managers the permission they’ve actually already had for years, to expose their funds to high-volatility investment vehicles. Crypto, gold, silver, private equity investing into leveraged buyouts of companies to rip the copper out of the walls, etc.

        Fidelity, Vanguard, et al. are exactly who asked for this and have already been doing this for years.

        • RION [she/her]@hexbear.net
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          3 days ago

          If they’ve already functionally had permission, what’s the meaningful change here?

          I also find myself skeptical that the barrier to high volatility investments being promoted in 401ks is that they didn’t have the right stuff to push. There’s been nothing functionally stopping fund administrators from offering gold ETFs for the two decades they’ve been available, for instance, it’s just not terribly common.

          • Lyudmila [she/her, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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            3 days ago

            Yes, this does in fact appear to be another useless retread EO, I think it’s another example of the administration trying to replicate existing legislation in order to signal their support for a concept or will it into happening.

      • peeonyou [he/him]@hexbear.net
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        3 days ago

        most people probably aren’t really managing their 401ks, they just have part of their check put in and they don’t think about it… the fund managers in the other hand might be enticed by the higher managing fees to take a bit more risk

        • RION [she/her]@hexbear.net
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          3 days ago

          But can’t that be said of any publicly traded investment with more risk and/or higher expense ratio? What’s different here that’s going to make this uniquely worse?

          • peeonyou [he/him]@hexbear.net
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            3 days ago

            I think because stocks and bonds have pretty well defined risk categories. You can choose to go risky or you can choose to go safe.

            Crypto is extremely volatile though and there isn’t realy much in the way of less risky investing. Maybe it will be offered as high-risk only? Maybe it will be rolled into broader investment portfolios to hedge the risk? Maybe the whole damn country will just get rug-pulled? Who knows?

            The fact that it’s even being considered tells me there’s something wrong going on here and it won’t be good for the people as a whole which in my experience is a pretty safe bet.