Can I Buy Bitcoin in My Fidelity IRA? Costs, Custody, Taxes

Yes, you can buy Bitcoin in a Fidelity IRA. Fidelity offers a product called Fidelity Crypto® IRA, a separate retirement account that lets you hold Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin, and Solana in a tax-advantaged wrapper. It links to a standard Fidelity brokerage IRA that acts as your funding source, and every dollar in and out flows through that linked account.¹

Which Fidelity IRAs Can Hold Bitcoin

Three registration types qualify:

Traditional Crypto IRA, where contributions may be deductible and gains grow tax-deferred.
Roth Crypto IRA, funded with after-tax dollars, with qualified withdrawals coming out tax-free.
Rollover Crypto IRA, for funds moved from a former employer’s retirement plan.

SEP IRAs, SIMPLE IRAs, inherited IRAs, and employer-sponsored 401(k) plans are not eligible for Fidelity’s crypto offering.¹ If your retirement savings sit in one of those, you’d have to roll eligible funds into a Rollover Crypto IRA first.

Who Qualifies to Open One

You need to be a U.S. citizen, at least 18, and living in a state where Fidelity Digital Assets can serve customers. California and Oregon residents are excluded. Fidelity doesn’t publish a full list of restricted states, so if you live elsewhere you’ll find out during the application.¹

How to Open and Fund the Account

The Crypto IRA is a separate account from your standard brokerage IRA, not an add-on. To open one you also need a Fidelity brokerage IRA with a matching registration type, which serves as the funding account. If you don’t already have that matching brokerage IRA, Fidelity opens one for you during the same process. Your Crypto IRA shares the beneficiary designation of the linked brokerage IRA.¹

Funding is a two-step move. Money enters the brokerage IRA first, through a contribution, transfer, or rollover, and then you shift cash from that account into the Crypto IRA to trade. You cannot send Bitcoin in from an outside wallet. All funding is in U.S. dollars.¹

Contribution limits apply across all your IRAs combined. For 2026, that ceiling is $7,500 if you’re under 50, or $8,600 if you’re 50 or older. Rollovers from another retirement plan do not count toward those limits.²

Placing a Bitcoin Trade

Once cash is in the Crypto IRA, you buy or sell through Fidelity’s website or mobile app. Orders can be entered as a dollar amount or a quantity of crypto. Before the trade executes, the platform shows a quote with the current price and fees, and you confirm with a swipe or click. Cash is debited, the crypto balance updates, and the transaction appears immediately in your account history. Availability of specific coins can vary by state.¹

What It Costs

There’s no fee to open or maintain the account and no custody fee for holding crypto. Each trade carries a 1% fee, charged in both directions. On a $10,000 Bitcoin purchase, that’s $100 when you buy and another $100 whenever you sell. Fidelity states that fees are subject to change.¹

How Fidelity Holds Your Bitcoin

Fidelity Digital Assets, LLC serves as custodian. It stores a portion of client holdings in offline cold storage and manages the private keys on your behalf.³ You never hold your own keys, and the crypto sits separately from the stocks, bonds, and funds in your brokerage IRA.

Crypto held in the account is not covered by FDIC or SIPC insurance. Those protections apply to bank deposits and traditional brokerage assets. The stocks and bonds in your linked brokerage IRA are still covered by SIPC as usual, but any Bitcoin sits outside that safety net.⁴ Worth factoring in when you decide how much of your retirement portfolio to put here.

Taxes Inside the Account

Crypto in an IRA follows the same tax rules as anything else in an IRA. In a Traditional or Rollover Crypto IRA, gains grow tax-deferred and taxes hit only at distribution, at your ordinary income rate. In a Roth Crypto IRA, qualified distributions after age 59½ (and at least five years from your first Roth contribution) come out tax-free, including appreciation on your Bitcoin.¹

A practical benefit of holding Bitcoin inside an IRA rather than a regular brokerage account: selling at a profit inside the account isn’t a taxable event. If Bitcoin runs up and you sell, no capital gains tax is triggered at that moment. Early withdrawals before 59½ generally carry a 10% penalty on top of any income tax owed, with limited exceptions, the same rules that apply to any IRA distribution.

Withdrawals and RMDs

Traditional and Rollover Crypto IRAs are subject to required minimum distributions. Because RMDs are paid in cash, you’ll need to sell crypto before Fidelity can process one, and the account needs sufficient cash on hand for the withdrawal to go through.⁵ Roth IRAs have no RMDs during the original owner’s lifetime, which makes a Roth Crypto IRA the natural fit if you want to hold Bitcoin long term without being forced to sell on a schedule.

The Collectibles Question You Should Know About

Internal Revenue Code Section 408(m) treats the purchase of a “collectible” inside an IRA as a taxable distribution. The IRS has carved out exceptions for certain gold, silver, and platinum coins and bullion, but cryptocurrency is not on that list.⁶

In 2023, the IRS issued Notice 2023-27 requesting comments on how non-fungible tokens should be treated under the collectibles rule and proposing a look-through analysis for NFTs. It did not resolve the treatment of fungible cryptocurrency like Bitcoin.⁷ As of 2026, the IRS has not published definitive guidance classifying Bitcoin under Section 408(m). Fidelity and other providers operate on the position that Bitcoin is not a collectible, but the question is unsettled. If you’re allocating a meaningful portion of your retirement savings here, a conversation with a tax professional about that uncertainty is worth having before you buy.

1
Fidelity Investments. Invest in a Crypto IRA
2
Internal Revenue Service. Retirement Topics – IRA Contribution Limits
3
Securities and Exchange Commission. Custodial Services Agreement
4
Fidelity Investments. Safety and Security With Fidelity Crypto
5
Fidelity. Required Minimum Distributions – RMD Rules and Options
6
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 26 USC 408 – Individual Retirement Accounts
7
Internal Revenue Service. Notice 2023-27