Labor Department Sends Crypto 401(k) Rule to White House for Review

The Labor Department filed a proposed regulatory framework with the White House on November 5, nudging crypto one step closer to the $10.8 trillion world of American 401(k) plans. The proposal landed at the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, the White House budget office shop that vets federal rules before they're finalized and published. Don't run to your HR portal yet — the filing changes nothing for savers on its own.

The move traces back to Trump's August 2025 executive order, which told federal agencies to smooth the path for retirement plans weighing alternative investments: crypto, private equity and real estate among them. It also builds on a March 2026 proposal that sketched out how plan managers could judge those assets in the first place.

That earlier framework flagged six things fiduciaries should scrutinize: performance, fees, liquidity, valuation, performance benchmarks and investment complexity. The Labor Department said managers need to weigh potentially higher expenses against the chance of stronger long-term returns and broader diversification, and admitted it's still tallying the costs of its own framework. Notably, the rule doesn't tell employers to add Bitcoin or any other coin — it hands fiduciaries a process to follow if they choose to look.

The prize is enormous. US 401(k) plans held roughly $10.8 trillion in assets at the end of June 2026, according to the Investment Company Institute. Crypto-focused firm Sweep pointed to that pool in a November 6 post on X, calculating that a 2% allocation would mean about $216 billion flowing into digital assets. That math assumes the entire retirement pool moves, though, and there's no signal that employers, fiduciaries or savers plan to do anything of the sort.

Not everyone is cheering. Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren have already urged the Labor Department to scrap the effort, warning that volatile and complicated assets could burn ordinary investors. The fight also marks a reversal: the Biden administration told plan managers to be extremely careful about crypto, and Trump's team withdrew that guidance in favor of a more neutral stance.

Next up is the White House review, which has to wrap before the Labor Department can publish a final rule. Even then, crypto wouldn't automatically appear in every workplace account. The real test is how many retirement providers feel comfortable offering digital assets — and how much volatility savers are willing to stomach.