The White House regulatory review office has completed its assessment of a Department of Labor proposal that would reshape how 401(k) fiduciaries evaluate alternative assets including crypto — a rule classified as 'economically significant' given its potential impact on nearly $50 trillion in retirement savings.
The White House's Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs completed its review on 24 March of a Department of Labor rule that could open America's retirement savings system to crypto investments — a proposal classified as "economically significant" because of its potential impact on tens of trillions of dollars in managed assets.
The US retirement market held $48.1 trillion in financial assets as of September 2025, according to the Investment Company Institute. The 401(k) segment alone accounts for roughly $10 trillion of that total. Under current Department of Labor guidance, fiduciaries managing these plans have had almost no guidance on digital assets; a 2022 compliance bulletin under the Biden administration warned plan administrators to exercise "extreme care" before including crypto options, effectively discouraging adoption without outright banning it. That bulletin was rescinded on 28 May 2025.
The new proposal would replace caution with a framework. Rather than warning fiduciaries away from crypto, it would establish clear criteria for evaluating digital-asset exposure alongside other alternative investments such as private equity and real estate. The DOL is expected to publish the proposed rule for a standard 60-day public comment period, followed by revisions and a final rule — a process that typically takes six to twelve months from initial publication.
OIRA designated the rule as "economically significant," a classification triggered when a regulation is expected to have an annual effect on the economy of $200 million or more. That threshold is almost laughably low relative to the assets at stake; even a one per cent allocation across the 401(k) market would represent $100 billion flowing into crypto-related investment vehicles. The designation does, however, trigger additional cost-benefit analysis under Executive Order 12866 — the kind of rigorous economic review that makes the final rule harder to challenge in court.
The proposal traces its origins to President Trump's executive order of 7 August 2025, which directed federal agencies to expand access to alternative assets in employer-sponsored retirement plans. That order required inter-agency collaboration between the Treasury and the SEC, and its language was broad enough to encompass digital assets, private credit, and real estate alongside crypto. The DOL's rulemaking is the first concrete regulatory output from that directive.
The practical effect will depend on the details of the fiduciary standard the DOL adopts. If the rule permits direct crypto holdings within 401(k) plans, the inflows could be enormous — though they would likely materialise gradually, filtered through the conservative decision-making processes of plan administrators and their legal advisers. A more probable near-term outcome is expanded access to crypto through regulated investment vehicles: spot bitcoin ETFs from BlackRock, Fidelity, and others that already hold tens of billions in assets and would slot neatly into existing plan structures.
Indiana is already moving ahead at the state level. On 25 February, the state legislature passed a bill requiring state retirement plans to offer self-directed brokerage options that include at least one crypto investment option, with an implementation deadline of 1 July 2027. If the federal rule establishes a permissive framework, other states are likely to follow.
The GENIUS Act, signed into law earlier this year, and the advancing Crypto Clarity Act in the Senate have created a regulatory environment that is more hospitable to institutional crypto adoption than anything that existed even 12 months ago. The DOL rule fits squarely within that trend — it is the retirement-market corollary to the SEC's Reg Crypto framework and the CFTC's expanded derivatives oversight.
Critics will argue that retirement savings are precisely the wrong place to introduce volatile digital assets. The 2022 implosion of FTX, Celsius, and Three Arrows Capital wiped out billions in investor funds and demonstrated that crypto markets can fail in ways that traditional asset classes rarely do. A 401(k) is not a brokerage account; workers cannot easily replace lost retirement savings, and the fiduciary standard exists to protect them from reckless risk-taking by plan administrators.
That tension — between expanding access and protecting savers — will define the public comment period. The crypto industry will push for maximum flexibility; consumer advocates and some Congressional Democrats will push for guardrails. The DOL's final rule will land somewhere between those poles.
Under the previous administration, the federal government actively discouraged crypto in retirement plans. Under this one, the DOL has completed a formal rulemaking, OIRA has reviewed it, and the 60-day public comment clock is about to start. The policy reversal is already a fact; the $48.1 trillion consequences are not.
