BitIRA Reviews

What is BitIRA?

BitIRA is a crypto IRA firm based in Burbank, California. Their office is located at 3500 W Olive Ave Suite 300, Burbank, CA 91505. Similarly, their contact number is 1800-299-1567. 

The company allows consumers to diversify and expand their portfolios by investing in cryptocurrencies. Their selection of cryptocurrencies covers 65% of the total industry’s market capitalization. 

BitIRA is one of the first companies to offer crypto IRAs to consumers. Their primary competitors are Bitcoin IRA, iTrustCapital and Regal Wallet. 

BitIRA is a subsidiary of Birch Gold Group, a prominent gold and silver bullion dealer. The company has profiles on multiple consumer platforms including Business Consumer Alliance and Better Business Bureau. 

Furthermore, they have partnered with two of the most reputed custodians in the industry:

• Equity Trust 
• Preferred Trust

The firm performs all transactions on the Genesis platform, which allows for a unique interest-earning facility for loan assets. 

People Behind BitIRA:

Their website doesn’t disclose any information regarding their leadership. However, a few Google searches revealed information about the following executives of BitIRA:

Andy Klein

Andy Klein is the Director of Strategic Planning at BitIRA. He has been an integral part of the company since its inception. 

Along with that position, he serves as the Marketing Director of Birch Gold Group. Andy is a member of the Forbes Finance Council as well. Before becoming the Director of Strategic Planning at BitIRA he was the Marketing Director of US Tax Shield and prior to that, he was the Marketing Director of StudentRefinance.com. 

Andy has a Bachelor of Arts in Communications (Marketing) from the University of Pennsylvania. 

Jay Blaskey

Jay Blaskey is the Head of Sales at this crypto IRA firm. He has been with the company since its inception. 

Before handling this position, he served in various roles at Birch Gold Group including Sales Consultant as well as Head of Retirement Sales Group Operations. 

Jay has a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science with Spanish from the University of Liverpool. Also, he has an MBA in Finance and Strategic Planning from UCLA Anderson School of Management. 

How to Signup With BitIRA:

To start the signup process, you would first need to go to their website. You can sign up for their free info guide covering the fundamentals of crypto IRAs. 

Then, the company will get in touch with you and ask you to choose the type of IRA you want to set up. You can choose from the following options: 

• Traditional IRA: Here, your contributions will be tax-deferred while your distributions would be taxable. Early distributions might lead to penalties. 
• Roth IRA: In this case, you would need to pay taxes on your contributions while your distributions would be tax-free. These are suitable for those who believe they would be in a higher tax bracket.

BitIRA has a dedicated team of experts who can guide you through the entire sign-up process. Once you have selected the account type you want to open, you would be asked to select the method to fund your IRA.

You can either add funds directly through IRA-eligible contributions or rollover funds from an existing IRA. 

Both of the processes take relatively the same amount of time. Opening a self-directed IRA requires a custodian. So, you would need to choose from their two custody partners. 

However, keep in mind that your fees would depend largely on the custodian you choose. Hence, choose carefully. 

After you have funded the account, you can start trading cryptocurrencies through your new IRA. 

BitIRA Coins: What Products Do They Offer?

BitIRA has a decent collection of cryptocurrencies to offer to customers. Currently, they offer 23 cryptocurrencies to investors including all of the most popular ones. 

The most notable cryptocurrencies available in their selection are: 

Bitcoin: The first and the most well-known cryptocurrency, Bitcoin is the pioneer of the industry. It is a blockchain-based peer-to-peer transaction token. 

Bitcoin Cash: Bitcoin Cash is a newer token based on Bitcoin. It was developed because of a hard fork in the original Bitcoin network. Bitcoin Cash enjoys high popularity among a large section of crypto investors. 

Chainlink: Chainlink is a decentralized Oracle network. It enables one blockchain system to connect with other blockchain systems. The LINK token entered the industry in 2017 and has risen substantially in popularity since then. 

Ethereum: Ethereum is both a digital currency and a platform. It allows consumers to use Smart Contracts to perform transactions. Ether, the value token of Ethereum acts is a digital currency. 

Litecoin: A former Google employee, Charlie Lee, developed and released Litecoin in 2011. It is quite similar to Bitcoin but much faster. Considered an alt-coin, this digital currency is 4 times faster in processing speed than Bitcoin.

Apart from the above, there are the following BitIRA coins: 

• Yearn. Finance
• Maker
• Dai
• Compound
• Livepeer
• Uniswap
• Aave
• Zcash
• Stellar Lumens
• Dcentraland
• The Graph
• Basic Attention Token

Certainly, the selection is impressive. It has all of the major cryptocurrencies and the company expands it regularly. The selection has enough variety to help investors diversify their portfolios.

BitIRA Fees and Account Minimum:

The BitIRA fee for setting up a new account is $50. Apart from that, they charge a wire fee of $30 and an annual depository charge of $400. 

On your first purchase, you would need to pay a $300 transaction fee and $100 on any subsequent purchases. 

Similarly, they charge a sell transaction fee of $100. 

Depending on your investment size you might have to pay an account management fee ranging from $300 to $1,000. 

The minimum deposit requirement with this IRA firm is $5,000. 

It’s worth noting that BitIRA customers wouldn’t need to pay the monthly custodian fee of Equity Trust Company according to their new policy. 

On top of these charges, your fees would be dependent on the custodian you choose. 

BitIRA works with two custodians: Equity Trust and Preferred Trust. You should select the one which matches your personal requirements. 

Initial Setup Fee	$50
Wire Fee	$30
Annual Storage Fee	$400
Annual Maintenance Fee	$300 to $1,000
Buy Transaction Fee	$300 on your first purchase, $100 on subsequent purchases
Sell Transaction Fee	$100
Account Minimum	$5,000

Additional Highlights of BitIRA: What Makes Them Stand Out

Apart from being a part of a major gold IRA company, there are plenty of factors which make BitIRA a unique service provider. Here’s a detailed explanation of them:

Partnership with Genesis: 

BitIRA has partnered with Genesis to offer cryptocurrency trading to consumers. Genesis is an industry leader in the trading industry since it launched the first OTC bitcoin trading desk in 2013. 

The company provides clients with 24/7 coverage and support and has offices all over the globe.

Genesis has over 100 virtual currencies and their trade volume has exceeded $116.5 billion. 

Working with such a reputed partner ensures that 

Advanced Security Measures:

BitIRA uses multiple technologies and implementations to ensure its clients’ funds and assets remain secure. 

It offers its customers’ assets in cold storage where the assets go offline when they are not in use. This helps protect them from any hacking attempts.

On top of that, the company employs a multi-factor authorization system. This way, only you have access to your funds and assets. The cold storage servers are kept in Grade-5 Nuclear Bunkers with specialized security and staff which monitor them 24/7. 

Such security ensures that no physical thieving attempts are possible. 

That’s not all. 

BitIRA provides its clients with dollar-to-dollar insurance with coverage of up to $100 million. If your balance is in cash, it gets insurance up to $3.75 million. 

Free Resources for Consumers:

BitIRA provides customers with a plethora of free resources. For starters, you can get a free information guide from this crypto firm which covers the basics of cryptocurrency investing. 

Through this guide, you would learn about all the necessary steps to set up a self-directed IRA and its various compliance requirements. Customers interested in this guide only have to submit their personal contact information on their website. 

Moreover, the company has an allocation calculator which lets you estimate how your investments would perform depending on how much of your portfolio is allocated to cryptocurrencies.

For example, I used the allocation calculator to generate the estimated returns of a $50,000 portfolio with a 20% allocation to crypto. The expected annual return from crypto was 13% and the investment length was 5 years. 

Here is the result:

The engine splits the rest of the portfolio in a 60:40 ratio between stocks and bonds. It’s a great tool to determine how much impact cryptocurrencies might play in your portfolio. 

Also, the company has a dedicated FAQ section covering the basics such as:

• What is a Custodian?
• What is a Wallet?
• What is an Exchange?

You can find a regularly-updated blog on BitIRA as well. Their blog covers topics about cryptocurrencies, investing, the global economy and personal finance. 

At the time of writing this review, some of the latest posts on their blog were:

• 4 Critical Lessons from the FTX Collapse
• What Smart Crypto Investors are doing after the FTX Collapse
• Market Update: Custody, Ownership and Your Digital IRA Assets

They publish new articles on their blog every week. Whether you’re new to crypto or a seasoned investor, you might find their blog to be quite useful. 

Additionally, they have multiple free guides available on their website covering cryptocurrency insurance, tax questions, regulators, regulations, and digital IRAs. 

My BitIRA Dashboard:

The crypto IRA company has developed a custom online dashboard for its customers. It shows you all the necessary information you would need as a crypto investor. This includes information about your balance, transactions, past performance and more. 

You can add funds to your account directly from this dashboard and place custom buy and sell orders. 

It is 24/7 accessible and the active customer support of the company ensures that you never face any issues for too long.

BitIRA Reviews and Complaints:

There are plenty of BitIRA reviews online to help you understand how their customers perceive them. The company has an overwhelmingly positive rating online indicating they have succeeded in satisfying most of their clients. 

On BBB, the company has received an A+ rating and a 4.95 out of 5 stars rating based on 20 customer reviews. 

Similarly, they have received 74 reviews on Birdeye and their overall rating is 4.9 out of 5 stars. 

On ConsumerAffairs, there are 19 BitIRA reviews available and they give the company an aggregate rating of 4.9 out of 5 stars. 

Their Google profile has 30 BitIRA reviews and their rating is 4.5 out of 5 stars. 

Most of the reviews there praise the company’s effective customer support and focus on client education. 

Their clients praise the company’s helpful staff and effective client education implementations. 

For example, Ann shares that she began rolling over her funds to this crypto IRA firm in 2020. She did extensive research and compared multiple companies before deciding on BitIRA. Ann highlights that the rollover process was easy. 

The company’s representative was very helpful in explaining the process to her and it only took them 2 phone calls. 

She points out that her account executive is always there to answer and take care of any technical issues if she needs him. Ann ends her review by saying that she knows her investments are safe and well-covered with BitIRA.

Browsing through their reviews, you will find plenty of similar stories. Surely, the company has done well in this regard. 

Are There Any BitIRA Complaints? Should You Be Concerned? 

Although there are plenty of reviews on this company, I didn’t find any BitIRA complaints online. Apparently, the company is relatively quick in responding to complaints. 

There were a handful of reviews giving them a 4 out of 5 stars but there weren’t any complaints mentioned in them. 

It felt refreshing to find a company with such a positive reputation in the industry.

Is BitIRA Legit?

Yes, BitIRA is a legit crypto IRA company with an overwhelmingly positive reputation among customers. They have an impressive selection of assets and a unique set of features helping them stand apart from the competition.

This firm has multiple partnerships with various industry leaders each specializing in one aspect of cryptocurrency investing. 

For starters, the company has partnered with Genesis, one of the industry’s top crypto trading platforms. Similarly, they have partnerships with two major custodians namely, Equity Trust and Preferred Trust. 

Furthermore, the company has a good standing with its customers and enjoys a positive rating on all consumer platforms it is listed. 

They provide consumers with a ton of free resources including an allocation calculator, multiple crypto guides and an active blog. 

Their only drawback might be their asset selection as it is not as large as some crypto IRA companies. 

BitIRA ticks all the boxes you would expect to see in a top crypto IRA company. They have a decent asset selection, a reasonable fee structure and an amazing reputation in the industry. 

The company is a subsidiary of one of the top precious metal dealers. Hence, their leadership is highly experienced in offering alternative investments to consumers. 

Still, if you’re interested in checking out other companies you can view our list of top crypto IRA companies here.