I am Josh have been in Bitcoin since early 2013 and want to share my experience on crypto as a retirement option.
"Arbitraging" $GBTC in a Retirement Account via BitcoinIRA
Recently on Tuesday (June 14th), I decided I did not like the premium on $GBTC which was trading at over 80% premium. So I sold all shares of $GBTC that I have had since inception and made a very nice USD profit off of. $GBTC hit its highest premium rate of 99% at 144 per $GBTC while Bitcoin hit $778 on Bitstamp on Friday (June 17th).
Tuesday night after a post that I saw on Reddit I decided to contact BitcoinIRA and by Wednesday I had filled out the Rollover IRA and started the process of the transfer to have BitcoinIRA buy the bitcoins to hold in a BitGO wallet that is being processed by Kingdom Trust and Genesis Trading from my Fidelity Rollover IRA account.
Why do this:
A $GBTC who bought 100 shares (9.48 bitcoin) at $40 and sold all at $115, can buy BitcoinIRA Bitcoin at ~$740 Bitcoin (as of June 20th) with a ~7% fee ends up with 14.45 Bitcoins in their retirement account. Thus a 0.525 Bitcoins for every 1 bitcoin by doing this trade.
Pros:
After a few days I was able to “arbitrage” my shares of $GBTC into more “real” bitcoins.
Its still in a IRA so no taxes are paid.
I see my bitcoins but have insurance on them.
Cons:
Still controlled by 3rd party
Lesson Learned:
Be careful when processing the paperwork as to not rollover all stocks, luckily I have this as a separate account but had 1 stupid stock that recently did a 10 : 1 stock split that I bought just to watch the bankruptcy procedures. This was going to hold up my transfers but after many phone calls it was corrected.
Shoutout:
To Chris at BitcoinIRA — PHONE 800–717–1130 EXT 7005 — CHRIS@BITCOINIRA.COM