iTrustCapital Review

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iTrustCapital is a self-directed IRA platform based in Irvine, California that lets investors buy and sell cryptocurrency, gold, and silver inside a tax-advantaged retirement account.

The company launched in 2018 and has since processed transactions for hundreds of thousands of clients, positioning itself as a lower-cost alternative to older crypto IRA providers.

This review breaks down its fees, supported assets, security setup, and how it stacks up against competitors like BitcoinIRA and Alto CryptoIRA, using current pricing data as of mid-2026.

Key Takeaways

• iTrustCapital charges a flat 1% fee on crypto trades and no monthly or setup fees, which is lower than most crypto IRA competitors.
• The platform supports more than 90 cryptocurrencies plus physical gold and silver stored at the Royal Canadian Mint.
• Account setup typically takes minutes online, and funding through a rollover usually completes within five to fifteen business days.

What iTrustCapital Actually Does

iTrustCapital operates as a software layer between investors and a regulated custodian.

It does not hold client funds itself. Instead, it partners with a state-chartered trust company to custody the IRA assets and routes crypto trades through Coinbase and Fireblocks infrastructure.

The pitch is simple: most 401(k) and IRA providers only let you buy stocks, bonds, and mutual funds. iTrustCapital gives retirement savers a legal path into Bitcoin, Ethereum, and precious metals without triggering a taxable event on every trade.

The account opening process is entirely online. Investors pick an account type (Traditional, Roth, or SEP IRA, plus a newer non-retirement Premium Custody Account), choose a funding method, and get verified.

Most people are approved within a few minutes, though the account isn't usable until money actually lands in it.

If you're rolling over an existing 401(k) or IRA from another custodian, expect the transfer to take five to fifteen business days depending on how fast your old provider responds.

Direct cash contributions by ACH move faster, often clearing within a day or two.

Fee Structure

Fees are where iTrustCapital tends to win comparisons, and the structure is genuinely simple. Here's the breakdown:

No setup fee and no recurring account fee puts iTrustCapital ahead of providers like Alto CryptoIRA, which charges the same 1% crypto fee but adds $10 a month or $100 a year on top.

Swan Bitcoin's IRA product charges 0.99% per transaction plus a small 0.02% monthly fee. Over a multi-year holding period, those monthly charges add up even if the per-trade cost looks similar on paper.

Supported Assets

Crypto selection has grown substantially since the company's early years, when it supported around 25 to 30 coins.

As of 2026, iTrustCapital lists more than 90 cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, XRP, Polkadot, and Dogecoin. That's a meaningful jump, though it still trails Alto CryptoIRA's 250-plus coin list.

One notable gap: iTrustCapital doesn't offer stablecoins like USDC or USDT, so investors can't easily park funds in a dollar-pegged asset between trades.

Precious metals run through a system called VaultChain. Gold and silver purchased through the platform are stored at the Royal Canadian Mint and tracked digitally, with trades executed through Kitco Metals.

You never touch or store the physical metal yourself, which removes a headache that traditional gold IRA companies often push onto customers.

Staking is the newest addition. iTrustCapital enabled Ethereum and Solana staking in 2025 for both IRA and Premium Custody accounts.

Rewards accrue in the same token you staked and get credited automatically, minus a 22% service fee taken by the platform on staking rewards specifically (not on the underlying asset value).

Unstaking is available but subject to each blockchain's own lock-up period, which for Ethereum can run from hours to days depending on network conditions.

Account Minimums and Contribution Limits

There's a $1,000 minimum to open an account. That's notably lower than Swan Bitcoin's $3,000 threshold for its IRA product.

Because iTrustCapital accounts are still standard IRAs under IRS rules, annual contribution limits apply just like they would at Fidelity or Vanguard. For 2025, that limit is $7,000 for investors under 50 and $8,000 for those 50 and older.

Rollovers from an existing 401(k) or IRA aren't subject to that annual cap since you're moving existing retirement money rather than making a new contribution.

One limitation worth flagging plainly: joint accounts aren't available, and there's no spousal IRA option through iTrustCapital right now. Each account belongs to a single individual.

Security Setup

Client assets sit with third-party custodians rather than with iTrustCapital directly. The company states it never takes custody of client assets and doesn't lend, borrow against, or leverage them.

Crypto is secured through a combination of cold storage, multi-party computation, and hardware security modules, the same category of protections used by institutional custodians handling much larger sums.

The account operates on a closed-loop system, meaning funds can go in as crypto or USD but can only come out as USD to a linked bank account. Crypto cannot be withdrawn directly to an external wallet.

That's a deliberate design choice that limits what a hacker could do even with compromised login credentials, since there's no path to drain crypto straight out of the account.

It's worth being direct about what isn't covered. FDIC insurance protects USD cash sitting in the account, not the crypto or metals themselves.

Cryptocurrency is not legal tender and carries no government backing or deposit insurance, a fact iTrustCapital states clearly in its own disclosures.

Anyone putting retirement money into this platform should treat the crypto and metals holdings as fully at market risk, the same way they'd treat a stock position.

Where the Money Is Going

Retirement account exposure to crypto has been climbing for several years now.

A Fidelity Digital Assets survey found that 36% of institutional investors surveyed reported holding cryptocurrency, a share that has grown steadily since Fidelity began tracking the figure.

On the retail side, self-directed IRA custodians have reported year-over-year growth in the number of accounts holding alternative assets, driven partly by younger investors who came into crypto first and retirement planning second.

Gold demand has held up too, with central banks continuing to be large net buyers of gold in recent years according to World Gold Council data, which has kept retail interest in gold-backed retirement products elevated alongside crypto.

None of this guarantees returns. It does explain why platforms like iTrustCapital, BitcoinIRA, and Alto have all expanded their coin lists and account types over the past few years rather than staying static.

Demand for tax-advantaged crypto exposure hasn't gone away since the 2021 boom or the 2022 crash. It's just become a more normal part of retirement planning conversations.

How It Compares

Alto wins on raw coin selection and has a much lower minimum, but its ongoing fees eat into returns over time, especially for smaller accounts.

BitcoinIRA offers more hand-holding during onboarding, which matters if you've never dealt with a self-directed IRA before, but it costs more to use.

Swan is built entirely around Bitcoin, so if that's the only asset you care about, its focus and educational content are hard to beat.

iTrustCapital sits in the middle: broader than Swan, cheaper than BitcoinIRA, and less fee-heavy than Alto for anyone holding for the long term rather than trading constantly.

Strengths and Weaknesses

What works:

What doesn't:

Who Should Actually Use This

If you already have a 401(k) or IRA sitting somewhere and want to move a portion into crypto or gold without paying taxes on the conversion, iTrustCapital is a reasonable fit.

It also works well for buy-and-hold investors who don't need dozens of obscure altcoins and just want exposure to Bitcoin, Ethereum, and a handful of larger names alongside metals.

Active traders chasing smaller-cap coins will hit the platform's coin-selection ceiling faster than they'd like. Investors who want one account covering stocks, real estate, and crypto together will need a more flexible (and more complex) provider like Rocket Dollar or IRA Financial instead.