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As workers, we give a lot of agency to our superannuation funds to invest our hard-earned for us, all for the sake of having a nice sized nest egg we can use to live happily out our old age. We generally don’t blink when they plough money into international shares, or bet on hot new start-ups, airports, supermarkets or affordable housing in London.
But there’s one investment many of us get, rightfully, a bit antsy about putting our super towards, and that’s cryptocurrency.
Crypto might not seem like a safe super investment, but it’s growing in popularity.Credit: Michael Howard
Bitcoin and its ilk are not the sort of assets you’d pick as “safe bets” for your retirement funds. They’re highly volatile, largely unregulated, lack almost any real-world use cases, and, for most people, are very difficult to understand.
Unfortunately, they’re also extremely profitable, with Bitcoin’s price nearly doubling in the past year to $171,000, the sort of growth many workers wouldn’t mind getting a slice of.
What’s the problem?
Indeed, funds are slowly starting to view crypto as a viable asset for investment, with AMP becoming the first major super fund to invest in Bitcoin late last year – though it seems currently it’s the only one willing to take the plunge.
But among those who manage their own super, crypto is slowly becoming a more popular option, with SMSFs owning about $1.8 billion in digital currency as of this year. While this is a tiny amount of the broader $1 trillion invested in SMSFs, it’s a slice that’s slowly been growing, and is only likely to get more popular if crypto continues to increase in value.
