Man in suit dropping ceremonial bitcoin into a piggy bank.
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When BlackRock CEO Larry Fink calls something “the domain of money launderers and thieves,” market experts pay attention. So, on Sunday, October 12, when he referred to bitcoin by telling CBS’s “60 Minutes” host, Lesley Stahl, that “markets teach you, you have to always relook at your assumptions,” the reversal was notable. Although, given Blackrock’s Bitcoin exchange-traded fund impressive performance data, the change of heart was also not surprising.
BlackRock’s spot Bitcoin ETF (IBIT) became the fastest fund ever to reach $10 billion in assets after launching in January 2024. Now it holds nearly $100 billion, more than any other ETF in BlackRock’s 1,000-plus fund lineup.
But Fink’s new optimism about digital assets isn’t coincidental; it actually mirrors that of President Donald Trump’s August 7, 2025 executive order, which explicitly opened 401(k) plans to “holdings in actively managed investment vehicles that are investing in digital assets.”
The order’s logic is straightforward: wealthy Americans and government workers access alternative investments through pension plans, but 90 million Americans in employer-sponsored retirement plans don’t. “My Administration will relieve the regulatory burdens and litigation risk that impede American workers’ retirement accounts from achieving the competitive returns and asset diversification necessary to secure a dignified, comfortable retirement,” the order states.
The 2025 State of the Crypto Holders Report from the National Cryptocurrency Association found that 76% of users say crypto has had a positive impact on their lives, underscoring its move from niche experiment to mainstream asset class. For the 55 million Americans already using crypto, the question isn’t whether digital assets belong in portfolios, it is merely how to access these assets safely. Yet this rise in crypto adoption comes amid a systematic weakening of fiduciary-duty standards and oversight mechanisms that once protected U.S. retirement savers from high-risk products. This leaves investors to navigate a rapidly expanding market with fewer regulatory guardrails. Ironically, financial innovations like Bitcoin and blockchain technology may themselves offer some of the transparency and accountability that lawmakers and regulators have struggled to provide by law. That’s the benefit of using public, distributed ledgers.
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The 1929 Warning
CNBC anchor and New York Times columnist Andrew Ross Sorkin is deeply concerned about the too-big-to-continue climate the stock market is in. Sorkin told “60 Minutes” this week that he sees disturbing parallels of today’s market to America’s worst crash.
“I’m anxious we are at prices that may not feel sustainable,” Sorkin said, adding that we’re either “living through some kind of remarkable boom” or “reliving 1929.”
As Sorkin explains in his book “1929: Inside the Greatest Crash in Wall Street History – and How It Shattered a Nation,” Wall Street “democratized” stock investing right before the 1929 crash by letting buyers purchase with 10% down, borrowing the rest from brokers. “It was all wrapped in the flag of democratizing access,” Sorkin explained. “In good times it’s like free money. In bad times, you’re on the hook in a very bad way.”
Now that the Trump administration is taking a more lenient approach to consumer protections, the parallels are stark. “There’s speculation in the market today, there’s an increasing amount of debt, and all of that’s happening against the backdrop of the guard rails coming off,” Sorkin wrote.
For most Americans, those guardrails are not abstract—they protect the only wealth they have. According to 2022 data from the Federal Reserve’s Survey of Consumer Finance and analysis by the Economic Policy Institute, approximately two-thirds of U.S. household wealth is concentrated in two asset categories: primary residences and employer-sponsored retirement accounts.
The executive order acknowledges this tension, promising to “curb ERISA litigation that constrains fiduciaries’ ability to apply their best judgment.” Critics hear 1920s deregulation. Supporters hear removal of paternalistic barriers preventing working Americans from accessing investments available to the wealthy. Americans approaching retirement are caught in the middle—and skeptical. In fact, a recent Boldin survey of over 1,000 Americans found that nearly half oppose adding alternative assets like crypto to their 401(k)s, only about one-third support the idea, and roughly 80% say they’re unlikely to invest any portion of their retirement savings in such assets.
Bitcoin Was Built for TradFi Bubbles
However, there is a critical difference between 1929’s bubble and the 2025 bitcoin bull market: Bitcoin was born out of the 2008 crisis and designed to (among other things) address the same systemic vulnerabilities Sorkin fears.
On January 3, 2009, Bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto embedded a message in the Genesis Block: “The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks.” It wasn’t random, it was a timestamp and philosophical statement about why Bitcoin needed to exist. While governments rescued failing banks with taxpayer money, Nakamoto proposed an alternative: a monetary system with no central authority to bail out, no fractional reserve banking to collapse, no ‘too big to fail’ institutions.
Bitcoin wasn’t created to ride boom cycles. It was created to survive—and provide an alternative during—the exact breakdowns Sorkin describes.
How Bitcoin Prices Compare To The 1929 Stock Market Crash
Fixed supply vs. credit expansion. The 1929 crash stemmed partly from unconstrained credit creation. Bitcoin’s protocol enforces a hard cap of 21 million coins—no authority can “print” more to bail out failing entities.
Transparent settlement vs. opacity. 1929 exposed massive hidden leverage and counterparty failures. Bitcoin settles transparently every ten minutes with no trading halts or ability for authorities to freeze markets during panics.
Equal access vs. gatekeeping. Sorkin rightly warns about retail investors accessing opaque private equity deals. Bitcoin offers radically equal access—the same blockchain data available to BlackRock is available to every investor. No insider information.
Self-custody option vs. mandatory intermediation. Unlike 1929’s stock certificates held by brokers who could face insolvency, Bitcoin enables self-custody—eliminating counterparty risk entirely.
The executive order’s inclusion of digital assets isn’t comparable to credit-fueled stock speculation. As head of global market insights at Hashdex Asset Management, Gerry O’Shea told Reuters: “Bitcoin has moved beyond its early days as a merely speculative asset and is slowly entering into many investors’ long-term investment strategy. This EO will help accelerate this trend.”
Crypto Leaders See Historic Opportunity
The industry response has been bullish. Galaxy Digital CEO Mike Novogratz called the executive order’s potential impact “a monster pool of capital,” telling CNBC it represents a widening of avenues “for bringing more people into the tent” of crypto adoption.
Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong was equally emphatic, following his company’s May 2025 inclusion in the S&P 500, he told Yahoo Finance: “Crypto is here to stay. It’s going to be a part of everyone’s 401(k).”
Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse advocates for diversified crypto exposure in institutional portfolios. “I own XRP, BTC, and ETH, among a handful of others—we live in a multichain world, and I’ve advocated for a level-playing field instead of one token versus another,” Garlinghouse posted on X.
His multichain philosophy aligns with emerging retirement product development. As Grayscale’s diversified crypto ETF filing demonstrates, institutional investors increasingly recognize that different digital assets serve different purposes, bitcoin as digital gold and ether for decentralized applications and smart contracts, for example. A sophisticated ecosystem is emerging that balances access with safeguards:
- Spot Bitcoin ETFs from BlackRock, Fidelity, and Ark provide straightforward institutional vehicles with Securities and Exchange Commission oversight plus individual retirement account eligibility. BlackRock’s IBIT alone holds over 800,000 bitcoin—worth approximately $100 billion. The tradeoff? Annual fees of 0.20-0.25% and no self-custody benefits.
- Self-directed IRAs through platforms like BitIRA enable direct bitcoin holdings with IRS-compliant custody, offering true ownership but requiring greater personal responsibility.
- Diversified crypto baskets are here. In September 2025, the SEC approved Grayscale’s conversion of its Digital Large Cap Fund (GDLC) into a multi-asset ETF holding Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, XRP, and Cardano, a significant milestone that signals broader, regulated access to digital assets beyond single-coin exposure.
- Tokenized real-world assets like BlackRock’s BUIDL fund (which tokenizes U.S. Treasury exposure on blockchain) represent the convergence of traditional safe-haven assets with decentralized infrastructure.
Building Resilience For Retirement Plans, Instead Of Chasing Trends
Whether this represents breakthrough or breakdown depends on execution, not on Bitcoin’s software protocol, which has proven resilient for 17 years and counting. But whether fiduciaries implement prudent limits and regulators deliver promised clarity by early 2026. Sorkin’s 1929 warning carries weight. But the opacity and leverage that fueled that collapse are precisely what Bitcoin’s architecture eliminates: transparent settlement, no fractional reserves, no hidden counterparty risk.
The real danger isn’t Bitcoin—it’s whether fiduciaries treat it as speculation rather than strategic hedge, and whether promised regulatory safeguards materialize or stall. Trump’s executive order opened the door. How fiduciaries and investors walk through it will determine whether we are witnessing democratization or simply repeating 1929’s grave errors with more sophisticated technology.