FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Aug. 07, 2025
CONTACT: Jarice Thompson, jarice@ourfinancialsecurity.org
New Executive Order Greenlights Private Equity and Crypto Raiding Retirement Savings
Washington, D.C. — Today’s executive order threatens the retirement security of millions of people by opening the door for private equity funds and cryptocurrency to be offered inside 401(k)s and other defined‑contribution retirement plans. This would enable a massive transfer of wealth from workers’ hard-earned retirement savings to the richest Wall Street and crypto executives.
“Retirement savers hold over $12 trillion in 401(k)-style accounts, which are the backbone of retirement security for millions of families,” said Oscar Valdés Viera, private equity and capital markets policy analyst at Americans for Financial Reform. “It is a perilous mistake to let private equity or crypto treat retirement savings as a piggy bank to raid, we need policies that protect workers and allow people to retire with dignity, not deregulation that facilitates massive wealth transfers to private equity and crypto billionaires.”
Private equity investments lack the most basic investor protections like transparent disclosure, accurate and comparable reporting of returns, meaningful valuations, fee disclosure, and more. The private equity industry has recently struggled to raise additional funds, offered dwindling distributions to investors, and has had difficulty selling underperforming assets — all critical reasons for their push to access investments from retirement savers and other small, retail investors.
This dangerous policy shift could let private equity firms offload dubious assets and charge high fees to unwarned and unwary retirement savers. A recent joint report by Americans for Financial Reform Education Fund, the American Federation of Teachers, and the American Association of University Professors documented the failure of private equity returns to achieve the industry touted performance claims even to large institutional investors. Individual retirement savers who lack the leverage to demand lower fees, heightened transparency, or better terms are overwhelmingly likely to end up in the worse performing piece of this market.
“Private equity firms have long aimed to capture retirement funds to feed their billionaire‑making machine,” Valdés Viera added. “The industry peddles overvalued and risky investments with layers of fees and minimal transparency and now Trump wants to expose everyday retirement savers to these schemes.”
The executive order’s promotion of crypto assets in workers’ retirement accounts poses real risks from the highly volatile and fraud-ridden assets. In a major crypto downturn, people’s retirement savings could evaporate, as happened only 3 years ago when $2 trillion were wiped out in crypto winter. Experience with crypto is that industry insiders profit first and small investors often get left holding the bag.
“This is just another step in the administration’s fast march towards crypto deregulation and financial instability and nothing about the crypto industry’s unstable, scam laden, and predatory business model makes it a good retirement savings vehicle,” said Mark Hays, associate director of cryptocurrency and financial technology at AFR and Demand Progress. “Driving retirement savers into the arms of the crypto industry lets the President and his crypto cronies quickly pocket billions of dollars at the expense of workers’ retirement savings, and when that bubble bursts, millions of families will be harmed.”
It is no coincidence that the Trump administration is pushing for retail investors to get into private equity at precisely the same time that this Wall Street industry is facing increasing trouble unloading assets and attracting new institutional investors; this is a move to try to help PE executives at the expense of people saving for retirement. Similarly it doubles down on the administration’s perilous push to pump up the crypto industry — and his own crypto ventures — and embed risky crypto assets into the fabric of the financial system.
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