I Buy $100 of Bitcoin Every Monday in a Roth IRA. Here’s the Math.
James Pelton4 min read·Just now--
Every Monday at the same time, I dollar cost average a hundred dollars into Bitcoin. I will never pay capital gains taxes on a single dollar of those gains.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hCD6n7Aqv5A
That’s not a clever workaround or a loophole that the IRS is going to close next year. It’s just how Roth IRAs work, and almost nobody talks about using them for crypto.
Quick disclaimer up front: I am not a financial advisor. I am a guy on YouTube sharing what I’m actually doing with my own money. Please do your own research before doing anything with yours.
The math is what got me
Imagine you put fifty thousand dollars into Bitcoin over the next twenty years. Bitcoin grows. The position is now worth one hundred and fifty thousand dollars. That is one hundred grand in gains.
In a regular taxable account, you owe capital gains taxes on that hundred grand. Depending on your bracket, you might be writing a check to the IRS for around twenty thousand dollars when you finally cash out.
In a Roth IRA, you pay your tax up front, on the money you contributed. Then you let the position sit and grow. When you eventually take it out in retirement, you owe nothing on the gains. Zero. The IRS is done with you.
For a long-term position, that’s a twenty thousand dollar swing on a single fifty thousand dollar buy-in. The bigger the gain, the bigger the gap.
I am not day trading
I want to be clear about what this is and isn’t. I’m not buying altcoins. I’m not chasing memecoins. I’m not trying to time the next breakout.
I’m buying Bitcoin slowly, consistently, every week, and letting the time horizon do the work. This is a long-term wealth building play, not a get-rich-quick play. If you want exposure to crypto in retirement without the tax bill, this is one of the cleanest ways I’ve found to do it.
How I actually buy it
I use iTrustCapital. They specialize in self-directed IRAs that hold crypto, gold, and silver. Full transparency: I have a partnership with them, and there’s a hundred dollar funding bonus if you fund a thousand. That’s a ten percent gain on day one, before Bitcoin moves at all.
The setup itself is genuinely simple. You open the account, you fund it, and you start buying. They support a wide list of tokens. I personally stick with Bitcoin, with a small position in Ethereum and a small position in XRP. I’ve been burned enough times by altcoins outside the top ten that I just don’t go there anymore. Drop a comment on the video if you’ve been there too.
Inside the account, the buy flow is straightforward. Pick what you want to buy, see how much cash you have available, set the dollar amount, confirm. They use BitGo for storage, which is the same institutional grade custodian that some of the largest crypto exchanges use. Two factor authentication is on. Every trade triggers an email confirmation.
I don’t even look at the price. I have a recurring buy set for every Monday. One hundred dollars. Done. No emotional decisions, no checking the chart five times a day, no FOMO buys. The discipline of DCA matters more than the entry price over a twenty year horizon.
What it actually costs
Trading fees are one percent. On my hundred dollar weekly buy, that’s a buck. Not nothing, but not a deal breaker for what you’re getting in tax savings. There’s no monthly maintenance fee, no account minimum, and no hidden charges that I’ve been able to find. They also offer staking on some assets. Ethereum is paying around two and a quarter percent right now. Solana is around five percent. Those rates aren’t going to make you rich, but it’s free money on a position that would otherwise just be sitting there.
Why I’m sharing this
If you’re behind on retirement, Bitcoin in a Roth IRA might be one of the simplest ways to actually catch up. It’s still risky. It’s still crypto. But it’s way less risky than throwing money at altcoins hoping for a ten x.
The bigger point is this: most people don’t know this option exists. They buy crypto on a regular exchange, ride it up, and then get hit with a tax bill they didn’t plan for. You can avoid that bill entirely if you set things up right.
If you want the full walkthrough, I made a video covering the math, the security setup, the staking rates, and exactly what the buying experience looks like inside the account.
What’s your current retirement strategy? And are you accounting for the tax bill on your crypto?
