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cryptocurrency
New Trump Rule Would Let Private Equity, Crypto ‘Endanger Retirement Savings of Millions'
“This isn’t about advancing the interests of retirement savers, it is about opening a new profit center for crypto and Wall Street," said one critic.
Mar 31, 2026
US President Donald Trump's Labor Department on Monday unveiled a proposal that would welcome private equity and cryptocurrency investments into Americans' 401(k) plans, the culmination of an aggressive Wall Street lobbying push that could leave the retirement savings of millions vulnerable to the wild swings of so-called "alternative assets."
The proposed rule, now subject to a public comment period, was issued at the direction of a Trump executive order from last year that was characterized at the time as "the holy grail for private equity."
In addition to giving employers a green light to include private equity and crypto investments in 401(k) plans offered to workers, the new rule would establish a "safe harbor" allowing retirement account administrators to avoid legal action from employees who believe their funds were steered into excessively risky products.
"The legal immunity created by this safe harbor will incentivize financial advisers to pitch these toxic products, which will become ticking time bombs in tens of millions of retirement accounts, which will no doubt result in significant losses," warned Benjamin Schiffrin, director of securities policy at the advocacy group Better Markets. "There are good reasons why 401(k) plans have been considered closed to private markets and cryptocurrencies, and those reasons have not changed. The only thing that has changed is the administration’s support for these industries and regulators’ willingness to do their bidding."
"This is no reason to endanger the retirement savings of millions of Americans," Schiffrin added.
Oscar Valdés Viera, senior policy analyst at Americans for Financial Reform, similarly warned that "opening 401(k)s to these products risks turning workers’ retirement savings into a Ponzi-like scheme that throws a lifeline to an industry scrambling for fresh cash."
"This isn’t about advancing the interests of retirement savers, it is about opening a new profit center for crypto and Wall Street," said Viera. "Retirement savers should not be bailing out these high-risk industries and subsidizing the Wall Street and crypto billionaire class."
"Private equity firms should not get a free pass to loot workers’ 401(k) retirement savings."
Americans currently hold over $10 trillion combined in 401(k) plans, a huge trove of wealth that the private equity industry has been working for years to access. The Labor Department indicated that its proposed rule would apply to over 720,000 retirement plans covering roughly 118 million workers.
The American Prospect reported Tuesday that the managers of private equity firms are "already pressuring companies, third-party administrators, and the consultants who advise them to list their offerings" among workers' retirement plan options.
"One staffer at an institutional investor who is not authorized to speak to the media told the Prospect about their primary worry: that private equity will stick their most overvalued companies into continuation funds exclusively for 401(k) plan holders, or 'retail investors,' as they are known," the outlet continued. "Private credit firms are retailoring their funds for 401(k) plans as well, and some of the biggest have already struck deals with asset managers like Voya and Vanguard. 'I’d be shocked if the industry doesn’t attempt to dump their garbage onto retail,' the staffer said."
One recent analysis by the Private Equity Stakeholder Project (PESP) found that private equity funds for retail investors "dramatically underperformed publicly listed stock indexes" in 2025 while charging much higher fees.
Jim Baker, PESP's executive director, said Monday that "private equity firms should not get a free pass to loot workers’ 401(k) retirement savings."
“The bar for including private equity in 401(k)s should be extremely high,” said Baker. “Private equity funds have lagged public markets while charging much higher fees, and public pension funds are pulling back from the asset class. Instead, this rule risks shifting more financial risk onto workers who rely on their retirement savings for long-term security.”
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) also ripped the Labor Department rule, saying in a statement that "Americans facing an uncertain future in Trump’s economy will now have more reasons to question the security of their retirement savings—all so that Trump’s Wall Street buddies have another pile of cash to play with."
"Anyone who cares about the financial security of working people," said Warren, "should oppose this proposed rule."
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‘Corruption Couldn’t Be More Obvious’: Trump Stacks Key Panel With Crypto and Gambling CEOs
"President Trump has given up on caring about protecting working class Americans and has given the keys to our economy to billionaire scammers."
Feb 13, 2026
Alarms are being raised amid reports that President Donald Trump is stacking a key regulatory committee with CEOs of online prediction markets, cryptocurrency firms, and sports betting apps.
As reported on Thursday by the right-wing Daily Wire, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) is launching a new initiative called the Innovation Advisory Committee, which CFTC Chairman Michael Selig said would be tasked with ensuring "the CFTC’s decisions reflect market realities so the agency can future-proof its markets and develop clear rules of the road for the Golden Age of American Financial Markets."
Among the members of the committee are Tarek Mansour, CEO of online betting market Kalshi; Brian Armstrong, CEO of cryptocurrency hub Coinbase; Christian Genetski, president of the FanDuel sports betting app; and Matt Kalish, president of sports betting app DraftKings North America.
Emily Peterson-Cassin, education fund policy director at Demand Progress, said the committee's composition has deeply concerning implications for the future of the US economy.
"The corruption couldn’t be more obvious," said Peterson-Cassin. "It’s hard to see the CTFC succeeding at its mission to prevent a repeat of the 2008 financial crisis when it is influenced from the inside by a rogues’ gallery of billionaire CEOs responsible for monetizing and gamifying virtually every aspect of everyday life."
Peterson-Cassin added that the latest move shows that "President Trump has given up on caring about protecting working class Americans and has given the keys to our economy to billionaire scammers.”
The creation of the Innovation Advisory Committee wasn't the only news made by CFTC this week, as Barron's reported on Monday that the commission's enforcement division based in Chicago has now been completely gutted, as its entire litigation team has either resigned or been laid off.
One laid-off former CFTC attorney told Barron's that the gutting of the office will make it much easier for financial scammers to rip off Americans.
"If I was a different person I would launch a crypto scam right now," said the attorney, "because there’s no cops on the beat."
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'Corruption on a Breathtaking Level': Report Details Massive Foreign Investment in Trump Crypto Firm
"This was a bribe," said one critic.
Feb 01, 2026
A bombshell Saturday report from the Wall Street Journal revealed that a member of the Abu Dhabi royal family secretly backed a massive $500 million investment into the Trump family's cryptocurrency venture months before the Trump administration gave the United Arab Emirates access to highly sensitive artificial intelligence chip technology.
According to the Journal's sources, lieutenants of Abu Dhabi royal Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan signed a deal in early 2025 to buy a 49% stake in World Liberty Financial, the startup founded by members of the Trump family and the family of Trump Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff.
Documents reviewed by the Journal showed that the buyers in the deal agreed to "pay half up front, steering $187 million to Trump family entities," while "at least $31 million was also slated to flow to entities affiliated with" the Witkoff family.
Weeks after green lighting the investment into the Trump crypto venture, Tahnoon met directly with President Donald Trump and Witkoff in the White House, where he reportedly expressed interest in working with the US on AI-related technology.
Two months after this, the Journal noted, "the administration committed to give the tiny Gulf monarchy access to around 500,000 of the most advanced AI chips a year—enough to build one of the world’s biggest AI data center clusters."
Tahnoon in the past had tried to get US officials to give the UAE access to the chips, but was rebuffed on concerns that the cutting-edge technology could be passed along to top US geopolitical rival China, wrote the Journal.
Many observers expressed shock at the Journal's report, with some critics saying that it showed Trump and his associates were engaging in a criminal bribery scheme.
"This was a bribe," wrote Melanie D’Arrigo, executive director of the Campaign for New York Health, in a social media post. "UAE royals gave the Trump family $500 million, and Trump, in his presidential capacity, gave them access to tightly guarded American AI chips. The most powerful person on the planet, also happens to be the most shamelessly corrupt."
Jesse Eisinger, reporter and editor at ProPublica, argued that the Abu Dhabi investment into the Trump cypto firm "should rank among the greatest US scandals ever."
Democratic strategist David Axelrod also said that the scope of the Trump crypto investment scandal was historic in nature.
"In any other time or presidency, this story... would be an earthquake of a scandal," he wrote. "The size, scope and implications of it are unprecedented and mind-boggling."
Tommy Vietor, co-host of "Pod Save America," struggled to wrap his head around the scale of corruption on display.
"How do you add up the cost of corruption this massive?" he wondered. "It's not just that Trump is selling advanced AI tech to the highest bidder, national security be damned. Its that he's tapped that doofus Steve Witkoff as an international emissary so his son Zach Witkoff can mop up bribes."
Former Rep. Tom Malinkowski (D-NJ) warned the Trump and his associates that they could wind up paying a severe price for their deal with the UAE.
"If a future administration finds that such payments to the Trump family were acts of corruption," he wrote, "these people could be sanctioned under the Global Magnitsky Act, and the assets in the US could potentially be frozen."
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