http://blogs.marketwatch.com/thetell...ras/?link=sfmw

Forget stocks and bonds. You can now save for retirement by investing in bitcoin.


That’s possible through SecondMarket’s Bitcoin Investment Trust, the open-ended trust that launched in late September and invests solely in the digital currency. The Bitcoin Investment Trust is currently working with three IRA providers — PENSCO, Entrust and Equity Institutional — to allow investors to include bitcoin in their self-directed IRAs, SecondMarket Founder and Chief Executive Barry Silbert told MarketWatch.


“We also were just able to get the Bitcoin Investment Trust into a number of self-directed IRA provider platforms. For the first time, you can now invest in bitcoin in your IRA,” he said.


The Bitcoin Investment Trust currently has about $15 million in assets under management. ”We were aiming for $10 million by the end of the year. We got to $15 million in four weeks,” said Silbert.
Al Lewis/MarketWatch

The popularity of the trust could be a factor behind the recent surge in bitcoin, which has investors crying “bubble.” Bitcoin prices skyrocketed above $300 this week, recently fetching $347.00 on the trading exchange Mt. Gox. That’s a one-week rise of nearly 63% since $213.50 on Nov. 1, according to the pricing website gold.net, which pulls prices from Mt. Gox. The slew of record highs kicked off early Wednesday, when prices finally jumped passed the intraday record of $266 set in April.


Interest in the Bitcoin Investment Trust is coming from technology entrepreneurs, family offices and people on Wall Street. Some family offices are beginning to put a portion of their gold allocation into bitcoin, Silbert said. The Wall Street category includes fund managers and traders “who are investing personally, which we think is a precursor to institutional money coming in,” he added.