Now there’s one retirement account to hold them all.
Kingdom Trust, a $13 billion custodian based in Sioux Falls, S.D., introduced on Wednesday “Choice,” a “unified” retirement account it claims is capable of holding all asset classes, including cryptocurrencies.
"By our estimates, there are 7.1 million Americans who own bitcoin, have a retirement account, but currently don't have the option to hold bitcoin in their retirement account with their other assets,” said Ryan Radloff, CEO of Kingdom Trust, in comments released on Wednesday. “That changed today. Bitcoiners now have a choice, and it's backed by one of the top retirement custodians in the market."
Choice, an IRA, will be able to buy, sell and hold traditional, alternative and digital investments, including stocks, ETFs and digital assets via a self-service platform. As an added bonus, Kingdom Trust is offering the first 1,000 Choice members a bonus of $62.50 worth of bitcoin (approximately 640,000 satoshis as of May 27) that will be deposited into their accounts upon opening.
The launch of the account comes directly on the heels of Kingdom Trust’s acquisition of Choice Holdings, a cryptocurrency-oriented retirement account built by Radloff with other veterans of CoinShares, a crypto and digital asset manager he co-founded in 2017. The Choice Holdings acquisition was Kingdom Trust’s first purchase in the digital asset space.
Choice was trialed during the first quarter of 2020, according to the announcement, with bitcoin being the highest volume digital asset within the accounts and an average cryptocurrency trade amount being $13,000.
"In 2016, we [led] the way into digital asset custody, and that opened up the floodgates for a whole new crop of custodians,” said Matt Jennings, chairman at Kingdom Trust, in a released comment Thursday. “I expect this to be just the same.
“A unified account with market access and direct exposure to bitcoin will be the standard, not the exception, in five years, and I expect it will be because we [led] the way with Choice,” Jennings said.
Kingdom Trust was among the first custodians in the U.S. to offer qualified custody for bitcoin and other digital assets. It currently custodies over 20,000 assets residing in more than 100,000 retirement accounts.