US 401(k) Proposal Sets No Market-Cap Threshold for Digital Assets

The absence of a market-cap threshold shifts the gatekeeping burden squarely onto plan fiduciaries, making governance and due diligence — not asset size — the real filter for crypto's entry into 401(k) plans. That favors established assets like bitcoin and ether and structured vehicles such as ETFs and managed funds over direct holdings, with access likely arriving in stages rather than at once. The open question is whether fiduciaries, already wary of litigation risk, treat the flexibility as permission or as a liability trap; the pace of ETF and managed-fund launches, and the projected timeline for options and broader availability, will reveal how quickly that caution thaws.