“Sometimes we look at things where we’re like, ‘you know what, we should come out,’ and sometimes we don’t. And last week, we didn’t come out as fast.”

This is what Maximilian Pace, the technical director of BlockTrust IRA, said in an interview with CoinDesk.

BlockTrust IRA, an AI cryptocurrency retirement platform, was one of many cryptocurrency-focused companies to suffer the brutal selloff that gripped the market last week.

Related: 136-Year-Old Investment Firm Predicts Next Bitcoin Crash

Bitcoin (BTC), XRP (XRP), Ethereum (ETH), publicly traded companies with crypto on their balance sheets, no one was spared.

Bitcoin often indicates market sentiment with its movements. Once it falls, it drags others down. Last week, Bitcoin fell below $70,000 threshold up to $62,000. The move marked Bitcoin’s biggest drop since trading at similar levels in October 2024.

At press time, Bitcoin was slowly climbing back up, trading at $70,724.70

Bitcoin’s fall from its October peak has reignited the debate over whether crypto has any place in the American retirement system.

The speed and severity of the crypto selloff caught many companies off guard.

BlockTrust IRA, which has added $70 million in IRA funds over the past 12 months, found itself in the middle of the bloodbath.

Pace said the company relies on a “broad sense of analytics” designed to operate over longer time horizons rather than reacting to short-term market noise. That approach helped the company get through 2025, and Pace said the company “isn’t necessarily affected by volatility.”

For Pace, the key is perspective.

“There are ways to de-risk the investment, either from a time perspective or from a strategic perspective, that make it more attractive or more acceptable for things like 401(k) plans. But like anything, there’s risk.” he said

The core of concern is risk. Crypto is still a young and highly volatile asset class, where the price moves in minutes and hours, sometimes due to speculation. But pension funds are designed for steady, predictable growth.

In August, US President Donald Trump issued a executive order allowing 401(k) and other defined contribution retirement plans to access alternative assets, including digital assets.

Lee Reiners, a professor at the Duke Financial Economics Center and co-host of the “Coffee & Crypto” podcast, said many retirement plans already get indirect exposure to crypto through publicly traded companies such as Coinbase (NASDAQ: COIN), which are included in the major equity indices.

He added that without changes to the law, plan sponsors are unlikely to offer crypto or crypto ETFs as 401(k) options because of concerns about potential lawsuits.

Reiners also noted that the latest market turmoil has likely caused entrepreneurs who were considering such moves to think twice.

Meanwhile, Robert Crossley, Franklin TempletonThe global head of digital advisory services and industry believes blockchain can reshape retirement investment management.

He describes the retirement industry as closed, slow-moving and over-regulated and ripe for disruption through on-chain wallets and tokenized assets.

Done right, Crossley said, digital wealth could be better integrated with the rest of an individual’s financial life.

Related: What is blockchain? explained

This story was originally published by The Street on February 8, 2026, where it first appeared in the Personal Finances section Add TheStreet as a Preferred Source by clicking here.