If you’re motivated to go through the IRA onboarding as quickly as possible, it typically takes two weeks from the point of registration for bitcoin to land in your IRA vault. That timeline is contingent, however, on prompt responses from yourself and your current custodian processing your transfer request in a timely manner.

The most common way to fund an Unchained IRA is by transferring tax-advantaged funds from an existing traditional retirement account, such as another IRA or a 401k from a former employer. You can also fund your Unchained IRA through an annual contribution in USD.

Unfortunately, you cannot make bitcoin contributions to an IRA, as per IRS guidelines. The Unchained IRA must be funded in USD.

The only exception to that rule is if you already have a bitcoin IRA with another provider, and would like to transfer that IRA bitcoin into an Unchained IRA. In this scenario, it is possible to process an “in-kind transfer” into your Unchained IRA, as long as your current provider supports bitcoin withdrawals.

Any USD rollover, transfer, or annual contribution sent to your Unchained IRA is converted into bitcoin through our trading desk. Once the funds have settled at Fortis Bank (our financial services partner), Fortis will convert your tax-advantaged USD into BTC through the Unchained trading desk the following business day, and that bitcoin will be subsequently deposited into your IRA vault. The USD is converted into BTC at prevailing market rates, and Unchained charges a fee in line with our trading desk fees.

Following the purchase, you will receive a trade summary from our team, and the bitcoin will be deposited into your IRA vault within two business days.

Only the trading desk fee for bitcoin conversion is paid with funds from your retirement account. The other fees must be covered separately. Below is a fee breakdown for the Unchained IRA:

No, the Unchained IRA is not a checkbook IRA. It is a standard IRA account (we support Traditional, Roth, SEP, and Inherited IRAs) that is set up through Fortis Bank, our IRA financial services partner.

Unlike other bitcoin IRA providers, we have intentionally avoided using a checkbook IRA model due to the recent ruling in the McNulty case, which called into question the tax advantages of checkbook IRAs.

Each Unchained IRA you set up will require a separate account fee.

Concierge Onboarding fees only need to be paid once—we’ll guide you through setting up multiple vaults, and two hardware wallets can be used to secure as many vaults as you need.