Share this article
Bitcoin IRA Is Letting Customers Lend Out Their Crypto Retirement Funds
The digital asset IRA company will offer interest on cryptocurrency and cash holdings that customers want to lend out.
Updated Sep 13, 2021, 11:36 a.m. Published Oct 22, 2019, 12:00 p.m.
Bitcoin IRA will soon allow customers to lend their retirement assets for interest.
The firm, which provides digital asset individual retirement accounts (IRAs) is partnering with digital currency trader and lender Genesis Trading to offer interest on cryptocurrency and cash holdings that customers want to lend out, including bitcoin, ether, XRP, litecoin, and zcash.
STORY CONTINUES BELOW
Don't miss another story.Subscribe to the Crypto Daybook Americas Newsletter today. See all newsletters
The program will be launched in November with a limited number of participants on a first-come, first-served basis, and annual interest rates will vary based on lending coin and term length.
Bitcoin IRA declined to define a limit, but chief operating officer Chris Kline told CoinDesk that the firm aims to have the product available to anyone over the next six to seven months.
Kline said:
“We’re breaking new ground here, and we want to make sure clients understand everything and that it works well.”
The product is part of the company’s goal to eliminate annual custodial and monthly wallet fees for customers, he added. Yet, the firm wouldn’t reveal estimates on what interest rates would be.
“We’ll be able to offer more details on interest yields when we have an actual result,” Kline said.
“You’ll see some groups offer up to 8 to 12 percent interest. They often have asterisks next to those numbers … those rates are more in the 2 to 3 to 4 percent range. You’ll see someone deploy a 12 percent rate on bitcoin for three days.”
Bitcoin IRA chose Genesis because of the lending firm’s track record for being able to take on new clients.
Currently, Bitcoin IRA has processed more than $350 million in investments for more than 4,000 clients. Genesis has so far lent out a cumulative $2.3 billion in cryptocurrency and cash.
The product expansion is a deepening of Genesis’ relationship with Bitcoin IRA, which was already using Genesis’ over-the-counter trading desk.
“They are the largest digital IRA provider that we are aware of, and I think that we always want to be working with the leaders in the space,” Martin Garcia, co-head of sales and trading at Genesis, told CoinDesk.
Moving forward, despite legal battle
Bitcoin IRA’s partnership with Genesis comes despite the fact that the pension plan provider is embroiled in a lawsuit with Kingdom Trust, a Kentucky-based trust custodian that supported its product in 2016.
Kingdom claims that Bitcoin IRA has been using deceptive practices to get customers to switch from Kingdom Trust to BitGo, a qualified custodian with which Bitcoin IRA partnered in June.
Jason Anderson, president of Kingdom Trust, told CoinDesk:
“Clients have been surprised to find that their account is being transferred to a new custodian. In a lot of cases clients have chosen to reverse that decision.”
On Friday, a Kentucky federal judge dismissed Kingdom’s claims with prejudice, and Bitcoin IRA has filed a motion that the claims should proceed in South Dakota, where it filed its countersuit.
Despite the suit, Bitcoin IRA hasn’t stopped releasing products. In early September, the firm announced facial recognition for authentication of transactions. Later last month, it announced crypto swaps from bitcoin into ether without delays in settlement.
By next year, the firm aims to make its accounts open to a wider customer base by removing it’s $3,000 account minimum and replacing it with an automatic minimum monthly savings increment. While the firm doesn’t have a set estimate yet, Kline said that $50 a month might be a “realistic estimate.”
Kline said:
“It’s our biggest rollout. It will be designed so that everyone has access to retirement savings for cryptocurrencies.”
Bitcoin image via Shutterstock
More For You
What to know:
- As of October 2025, GoPlus has generated $4.7M in total revenue across its product lines. The GoPlus App is the primary revenue driver, contributing $2.5M (approx. 53%), followed by the SafeToken Protocol at $1.7M.
- GoPlus Intelligence's Token Security API averaged 717 million monthly calls year-to-date in 2025 , with a peak of nearly 1 billion calls in February 2025. Total blockchain-level requests, including transaction simulations, averaged an additional 350 million per month.
- Since its January 2025 launch , the $GPS token has registered over $5B in total spot volume and $10B in derivatives volume in 2025. Monthly spot volume peaked in March 2025 at over $1.1B , while derivatives volume peaked the same month at over $4B.
More For You
Bitcoin Holds Near $92K as Selling Cools, but Demand Still Lags
ETF inflows have finally turned positive, but weak on-chain activity, defensive derivatives positioning, and negative spot CVD show a market stabilizing without the conviction needed for a sustained move higher.
What to know:
- Bitcoin markets in Asia are stabilizing but remain structurally weak, with short-term holders dominating supply.
- U.S. ETF flows have shown signs of stabilization, but on-chain activity remains near cycle lows, indicating weak capital inflows.
- Bitcoin and Ether have seen price recoveries driven by spot demand and improved sentiment, while gold is supported by U.S. labor data and Fed rate cut expectations.
Top Stories
