Kingdom Trust acquires company from CoinShares founders, enables hybrid IRA with bitcoin bonus

Kingdom Trust, the $13 billion custodian, has acquired a crypto retirement company created by former CoinShares founders.

The acquisition of Choice Holdings enabled the launch of Kingdom Trust's Choice platform, a unified retirement account where individuals can hold different asset classes, including crypto. The custodian is also offering a bitcoin bonus to the first 1,000 users of the Choice platform. Once opened, they'll receive $62.50 in BTC in their account.

Ryan Radloff, CEO of Kingdom Trust, said the retirement custodian estimated 7.1 million American bitcoiners have a retirement account. However, there are few options to hold BTC with other assets in a retirement account.

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Radloff himself was a co-founder of Choice Holdings as well as a co-founder and previous CEO of CoinShares. Now, his current venture has acquired his previous one, marking the first digital asset acquisition for the retirement custodian. However, Kingdom Trust has offered custody for bitcoin and other digital assets since its early days in 2016. 

As CoinDesk reported, a relationship with crypto exchange Kraken enabled access to digital assets and legacy brokers for traditional assets. The retirement accounts enable the buying, selling and holding of digital assets with exchange-traded funds (ETFs) and stocks on the same platform. 

The firm already trialed a version of the Choice platform in Q1 of this year. Bitcoin drove the most volume of crypto transactions, and the average crypto trade reached $13,000, according to a release from Kingdom Trust. 

Kingdom Trust Chairman Matt Jennings said he expects a unified account with exposure to bitcoin will be standard in five years. 

About Author

Aislinn Keely is a reporter on The Block's policy team holding down the legal beat. She covers court decisions, bankruptcies, regulatory actions and other key moments in the legal sphere, putting them in context for the wider crypto industry. Before The Block, she lent her voice to the NPR affiliate WFUV and helmed Fordham University's student newspaper. Send tips or thoughts on all things policy and legal to [email protected] or follow her on Twitter for updates @AislinnKeely.