Casey Wagner

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 <ul>
 <li>Financial infrastructure provider throws its hat in the ring for a retirement account with crypto exposure</li>
 <li>With the rise of trading apps and crypto interest, this is a product investors have been asking for, expert says</li>
 </ul>
 
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Financial infrastructure provider Prime Trust is following the money, and in the US, it’s in retirement funds.&nbsp;



“Half of US wealth is in retirement funds,” Sara Xi, chief product officer at Prime Trust, said. “Even if we have 1% penetration, we&#8217;re talking about five hundred to $600 billion.” 



<div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="alignright size-bw-389x219"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="219" height="219" src="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/sara-xi-219x219.jpg" alt="Sara Xi" class="wp-image-16266" srcset="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/sara-xi-219x219.jpg?w=219 219w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/sara-xi-219x219.jpg?w=300 300w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/sara-xi-219x219.jpg?w=150 150w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/sara-xi-219x219.jpg?w=768 768w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/sara-xi-219x219.jpg?w=257 257w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/sara-xi-219x219.jpg?w=261 261w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/sara-xi-219x219.jpg?w=80 80w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/sara-xi-219x219.jpg?w=50 50w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/sara-xi-219x219.jpg?w=800 800w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 219px) 100vw, 219px" /><figcaption>Sara Xi</figcaption></figure></div>



Prime Trust announced the launch of its beta program for the Prime Trust Crypto IRA, a first-of-its-kind retirement account with a single application programming interface (API), on Tuesday. The new product allows users to onboard, fund accounts, and invest retirement funds in cryptocurrency, a structure clients prefer due to the tax benefits, Xi said.



“We see that traditional registered investment advisors want to offer crypto, just as another investment vehicle, to their end users,” Xi said. “We also see that crypto wallet apps and onramps have been doing quite well with crypto trading, but their customers want to take advantage of the tax benefits to invest some of their retirement funds into crypto.”



Through this new product, Prime Trust will offer traditional and ROTH IRAs and digital asset insurance for integrators and their users. Security has been a top concern for clients, Xi said, and the product will offer a warm-hot storage architecture supported by multi-party computation technology.



The Prime Trust Crypto IRA is backed by the company’s institutional grade financial API technology, Xi said, which includes compliance, custody, payment rails, crypto trading and settlement resources.&nbsp;



The beta launch comes as investors continue to push for ways to diversify into the asset class, Xi said. Bitcoin and ether are currently the most popular in terms of tokens, she added.&nbsp;



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">“The IRA account is a very recent interest area that we see all of the end consumers and our customers of our clients are interested in,” Xi said. “It&#8217;s really the fact that crypto is now a mainstream investment.”&nbsp;</blockquote>



New and existing Prime Trust clients can now <a href="https://go.primetrust.com/cryptoira.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">apply</a> to join the beta launch, and access will open to those accepted on June 1, 2022. The company hopes to have the product in the hands of end users by early fall 2022.&nbsp;



Prime Trust’s IRA product comes less than a year after ForUsAll, a retirement investment platform for small businesses, partnered with Coinbase to launch its Alt 401(k), an investment vehicle that allows employers to over crypto exposure through 401(k) accounts.&nbsp;



Xi expects that the industry will only continue to grow, and she looks forward to the expansion.&nbsp;



“It&#8217;s a huge market, not crowded at all, and we welcome all sorts of competition,” she said. “We are the one provider that harnessed the automation from API and complimented it with a full operational team…our goal is to make the end user experience very frictionless.”



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