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Retirement anxiety is running high in the United States, and crypto is not helping to calm it. A new survey from the National Institute on Retirement Security finds that 77% of Americans consider cryptocurrency in workplace retirement plans risky, with 46% going further and calling it very risky. At the same time, 53% outright oppose employers offering crypto as an investment option at all. The findings land at an awkward moment: the Trump administration has spent the past year systematically dismantling the regulatory guardrails that kept digital assets out of American pension accounts.
The survey, conducted by Greenwald Research between October 24 and November 14, 2025, covered 1,203 Americans aged 25 and older, with results weighted by age, gender and income. The numbers paint a picture of a public that is already stressed about retirement and deeply reluctant to add crypto to the mix.
A Retirement Crisis That Predates the Crypto Debate
The crypto skepticism does not exist in isolation. Eighty percent of respondents said the United States faces a retirement crisis, a sharp jump from 67% who said the same in 2020. Sixty-one percent expressed concern about achieving financial security in retirement, 68% said it is becoming harder to prepare for retirement, and 77% said debt is preventing them from saving adequately.
These are the conditions in which the crypto-in-retirement debate is unfolding. For a population already stretched thin and worried about whether they will have enough to live on, the prospect of exposing pension savings to an asset class known for violent price swings is not an abstract policy question. It is a personal threat. That context matters when reading the 77% risk figure: this is not a survey of sophisticated investors weighing portfolio theory. It is a snapshot of ordinary workers who feel financially precarious and are being asked whether they want their retirement accounts exposed to Bitcoin.
Washington Is Moving in the Opposite Direction
Despite the public’s wariness, federal policy has shifted decisively toward opening retirement accounts to crypto and other alternative assets. The moves have come in rapid succession over the past year.
In May 2025, the US Department of Labor rescinded guidance that had urged 401(k) plan fiduciaries to exercise extreme care when considering cryptocurrency investments. The department returned to a neutral stance that neither endorses nor discourages crypto in retirement plan investment menus. Then on August 7, 2025, President Donald Trump signed an executive order explicitly aimed at expanding access to alternative assets in defined-contribution retirement plans, including investment vehicles that hold digital assets. The order directed both the Labor Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission to consider regulatory changes to make that access easier.
Days after the executive order, the Labor Department went further and rescinded 2021 guidance that had discouraged 401(k) fiduciaries from considering alternative assets altogether, replacing it with a principles-based approach that leaves investment decisions largely to plan administrators. Then in March 2026, the department proposed formal rules outlining how fiduciaries could include alternative assets in investment lineups. The proposal included safe harbors designed to reduce litigation risk for plan sponsors, while requiring them to weigh factors such as fees, liquidity, valuation and performance before adding such assets.
The proposal has drawn fierce opposition from the left flank of Congress. Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, along with Representative Bobby Scott, wrote to the Labor Department in June urging it to withdraw the rules entirely, citing crypto’s volatility and what they described as insufficient investor safeguards.
The Gap Between Policy and Public Sentiment
What the survey exposes is a significant disconnect between where Washington is heading and what the American public actually wants. Policymakers and crypto advocates often frame broader access to digital assets in retirement accounts as expanding choice and financial freedom. The survey data suggests most Americans experience that framing differently, reading it as exposure to risk they did not ask for.
That gap has direct implications for how this plays out in practice. Even if the Labor Department’s proposed rules are finalised, plan sponsors will face a public that is largely hostile to the idea. Employers who add crypto options to their 401(k) menus risk reputational and legal exposure if those investments perform badly, and the safe harbors in the proposed rules may not fully insulate them. The Sanders-Warren pushback signals that any future administration could reverse course again, creating regulatory uncertainty that makes plan sponsors even more cautious.
For readers in Malaysia and Singapore, the story is a useful reference point. Both the Securities Commission Malaysia and the Monetary Authority of Singapore have taken cautious, structured approaches to crypto in retail investment products, and neither has moved to integrate digital assets into pension frameworks in any meaningful way. The American experiment, if it proceeds, will generate real-world data on what happens when crypto enters mass-market retirement savings at scale. Whether that data will vindicate the optimists or confirm the public’s instincts is the question that will define the next chapter of this debate.
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