DOL Crypto 401(k) Rule Reaches White House for Final Review

A Labor Department rule that would make it easier for 401(k) plans to hold alternative assets — including Bitcoin and other digital assets — has reached the White House for final regulatory review.

According to The Block (Sarah Wynn, Nov. 6) and The Crypto Times (citing Bloomberg), the Department of Labor submitted the package to the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. Primary OIRA records on reginfo.gov show the filing was received Nov. 5, 2026 under RIN 1210-AC38.

The move is one of the last procedural steps before a final rule can be published in the Federal Register. It does not put Bitcoin on every workplace menu overnight. It does, however, push a years-long fight over crypto in retirement accounts into its endgame.

What landed at OIRA

OIRA logged the document as "Fiduciary Duties In Selecting Designated Investment Alternatives." The Employee Benefits Security Administration is listed as the responsible office. The stage is Final Rule. The package is marked economically significant, and there is no legal deadline for completing the review.

The Block reported that the Thursday filing furthers President Donald Trump's executive order directing the Labor Department to clear a path for alternative assets in 401(k) plans. In describing costs and benefits, the department said it was still considering the costs.

That cost caveat matters. Plan sponsors have long argued that alternative sleeves can raise fees and operational complexity even when they promise diversification. The White House review is where those trade-offs get a final scrub before publication.

The March proposal and the six-factor safe harbor

The Crypto Times and Bitcoin Magazine both trace the filing to a proposal the Labor Department introduced on March 30, 2026. That draft aims to give employers and plan managers clearer room to consider alternatives when building participant menus.

Under the proposal, fiduciaries who follow a documented investment review process would receive legal protection under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974. That framework — a process-based safe harbor — is designed to lower lawsuit risk for committees that carefully assess options before adding them.

The covered asset list is broad: private equity, private debt, real estate, commodities, infrastructure, and investments linked to digital assets such as Bitcoin. Before adding those options, fiduciaries would need to weigh six non-exhaustive factors — performance, fees, liquidity, valuation, performance benchmarks, and complexity.

In plain terms, plan managers would have to show how an investment performs, what it costs, how easily participants can access cash, how value is marked, how returns compare with suitable benchmarks, and how hard the product is to oversee. The proposal does not force employers to offer Bitcoin or any other cryptocurrency. It only clarifies a legal path for those who want to consider it.

Trump's order and the Biden-era reversal

The rule follows Trump's Aug. 7, 2025 executive order, "Democratizing Access to Alternative Assets for 401(k) Investors." That order told the Labor Department to revisit retirement investment guidance and consider protections for fiduciaries who select alternatives.

DOL had already shifted tone in May 2025 by withdrawing its March 2022 guidance, which had told managers to exercise "extreme care" before putting crypto into 401(k) options. The Block noted that the department earlier reversed Biden-era messaging that discouraged crypto as a retirement option.

Deputy Labor Secretary Keith Sonderling has cast the approach as asset-neutral, saying the department's days of picking winners and losers are over — a line highlighted in later coverage of the March proposal. Whether that neutrality survives intact in the final text will only be clear when OIRA returns the rule and DOL publishes it.

Political pushback and market stakes

Capitol Hill has not been quiet. Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren have urged the Labor Department to scrap the crypto-friendly approach, arguing it would expose savers to volatile assets. Some House Republicans have instead called for the executive order's goals to be written into statute.

The politics sit next to a market that still trades every policy headline. Bitcoin recently held near the mid-$70,000s even as election-related crypto PAC bets took a hit and price action rebounded toward $80,000 — a reminder that retirement-access fights and short-term chart moves are related but not the same story.

The U.S. 401(k) market is worth roughly $12 trillion and covers more than 90 million defined-contribution savers, according to reporting around the proposal. For Bitcoin advocates, the prize is menu access through asset-allocation sleeves rather than a mandate. For critics, the worry is that process language will still green-light products many workers do not understand.

Separately, Washington's enforcement lane remains busy. Treasury and FinCEN this week moved to cut MEXC Global off U.S. banking rails over alleged illicit flows, while jurisdictions abroad tighten reporting — including Hong Kong's CARF crypto reporting law set for 2027. Opening retirement menus and policing offshore platforms can advance at the same time.

What happens next

OIRA review under Executive Order 12866 is the last major interagency checkpoint. Bloomberg Law and subsequent coverage say arrival usually signals a package nearing completion. The earlier proposed version cleared OIRA before March publication; that pass took roughly two months after submission, according to prior reporting on the same market.

What is not public yet is the final text. Whether the six-factor safe harbor survived comments intact, how digital-asset vehicles are described, and what effective date DOL chose will only be clear after OIRA returns the rule and the department posts it.

The Block quoted the department's own cost-benefit language in the filing: clarification must identify criteria fiduciaries should use to balance potentially higher expenses against seeking greater long-term net returns and broader diversification. That sentence is the heart of the fight — fees versus upside, prudence versus access.

For now, retirement committees are waiting. If the final rule lands largely as proposed, plan sponsors that want Bitcoin exposure through diversified sleeves will have a clearer ERISA map. If OIRA or DOL rewrites the factors, the map changes. Either way, crypto's path into American 401(k)s just moved from proposal stage to White House review.