Cryptocurrency now represents 10% of the average American investor’s portfolio, exceeding ETF exposure at 6%, creating sequence-of-returns risk for retirees who must sell volatile assets during downturns; Bitcoin is down 18.7% over the past year and Ethereum down 16.83% over five years.
Retirees and pre-retirees face a critical tradeoff between volatile crypto holdings and fixed-income alternatives like 10-year Treasuries yielding 4.35%, while the personal savings rate has fallen from 6.2% to 4.0%, concentrating portfolio volatility in a shrinking pool of retirement assets.
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The Charles Schwab Modern Wealth Survey 2025 found that cryptocurrency now accounts for 10% of the average American investor's portfolio, compared with 6% for exchange-traded funds and 8% for bonds. For investors in their accumulation years, that mix is a question of preference. For retirees and those within a decade of retirement, the composition introduces a different kind of math, one tied to the timing of withdrawals and the volatility of the assets being sold.
According to Schwab, 35% of investors currently hold crypto, and 65% of those holders plan to increase their allocation over the next 20 years. The average investor's portfolio now carries more digital asset exposure than ETF exposure, a structural change from how household portfolios were typically built a decade ago, when index funds and bonds dominated retail allocation.
The mean and median tell different stories: If ten investors each hold 2% in crypto and an eleventh holds 90%, the average jumps without describing what most people actually own. The 10% figure from Schwab reflects the full distribution, including investors with concentrated positions. For a retiree comparing themselves to the benchmark, the relevant question is whether their allocation aligns with their withdrawal timeline rather than the average.
Bitcoin trades at $76,346.98 as of April 28, 2026, down 11.69% year-to-date and down 18.7% over the past year, despite a one-month rally of 17.15%. Ethereum is at $2,296.66, down 22.48% year-to-date and down 16.83% over five years. A retiree who needed to fund expenses by selling either asset in recent months would have realized those losses in cash, regardless of the long-term trajectory.
The order in which gains and losses occur matters more than the average return when an investor is drawing down a portfolio, a dynamic known as sequence-of-returns risk. The CBOE Volatility Index reached 31.05 on March 27, 2026, a level associated with elevated fear, before declining 42% over the following month to 18.02. Retirees holding volatile positions during such spikes face the choice of selling at depressed prices or cutting spending until markets stabilize.
The 10-year Treasury yield sits at 4.35%, with a 12-month average of 4.232%. A retiree holding $500,000 in 10-year Treasuries would generate roughly $21,750 in annual interest, paid on a fixed schedule and backed by the federal government. The yield curve is positively sloped, with the 10-year minus 2-year spread at 0.57%, indicating that longer-dated bonds currently pay more than short-term instruments.
Inflation complicates the picture further, as the Consumer Price Index rose to 330.293 in March 2026, up from 320.302 in April 2025. A 4.35% Treasury yield against persistent inflation produces a positive but narrow real return. Bitcoin's 18.7% one-year decline occurred amid elevated CPI, complicating the inflation-hedge case for digital assets during that period.