5 Cryptos Retirees Should Avoid at All Costs, According to Experts
Written by
Vance Cariaga
Edited by
Zuri Anderson
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Reaching retirement age typically means taking a more cautious approach to investing. You don’t want to put your retirement savings in jeopardy by making bad bets on risky investments — especially when you’re living on a fixed income.
That’s why many financial experts advise retirees to be very careful about investing in cryptocurrency.
“To the extent retirees choose to play in the crypto market, they should stick to the ‘blue chips,’ namely Ethereum and Bitcoin. Most altcoins are structurally incompatible with the financial needs of retirees,” said Chad Cummings, an attorney and certified public accountant (CPA) at Cummings & Cummings Law, who previously worked in finance and tax with American Airlines, PwC and J.P. Morgan Chase.
Some financial experts recommend that retirees not invest any money in crypto — including Vince Stanzione, founder and CEO at First Information and author of “The Millionaire Dropout.”
“I believe retirees should avoid crypto completely — there is no valid reason to have anything invested [in it],” Stanzione told GOBankingRates. “Before anyone thinks I am a ‘salty bear’ I have made a multimillion-dollar fortune from crypto, but this was years ago and the best days are now gone. Also, I was in a position that I could afford to lose the capital invested.”
But if you’re retired and still have an itch to invest in crypto, you need to know which ones to steer clear of. Here are five cryptos retirees should avoid at costs, according to experts. All financial data are as of Oct. 30, 2025.
Solana (SOL)
- Price: $187.21
- YTD gain/loss: -2.25%
Solana was once the “golden boy of crypto,” according to Cummings, but has “fallen from grace” amid a history of network outages that would “terrify” any risk-conscious investor.
“Solana’s blockchain has experienced over a dozen full halts,” he told GBR. “During those periods, users could not transact, sell or exit. That operational failure has no parallel in traditional financial systems. Retirees relying on timing or liquidity would be completely frozen. Solana has no place in the portfolio of even the most risk-seeking retiree.”
Dogecoin (DOGE)
- Price: $0.186
- YTD gain/loss: -41%
Cummings called Dogecoin a “manipulated asset class masquerading as innovation.”
“Dogecoin was created as a joke,” he added. “It has no maximum supply, no long-term development team and no business use case. Its value depends entirely on celebrity tweets and online sentiment. The 10 largest wallets control over 40% of supply. That level of concentration invites predatory dumping. Retirees cannot absorb those risks.”
Shiba Inu (SHIB)
- Price: $ 0.000010
- YTD gain/loss: -52%
Shiba Inu, Dogecoin’s “spiritual successor” is “not an investment — it is a marketing project with zero governance, no audited codebase, and an absurdly inflated token supply,” Cummings said. “The founders are anonymous and offshore. There are no investor protections. Retirees who enter at the top will find no bid on the way down.”
XRP (XRP)
- Price: $2.508
- YTD gain/loss: +20%
XRP is another altcoin with a very concentrated investor base. As recently as August, the top 10 XRP blockchain wallets held 41% of all supply and the top 20 wallets held half of all supply, according to Motley Fool.
That ownership structure — combined with a Securities and Exchange Commission legal case involving the company behind the XRP token — make XRP a risky investment for retirees.
“XRP exposes holders to existential regulatory and exchange delisting risk,” Cummings said. “Most retirees do not understand the speed at which crypto assets become unrecoverable in litigation scenarios.”
Wall Street Pepe (WEPE)
- Price: $ 0.000026
- YTD gain/loss: -9.59%
Cummings includes Wall Street Pepe among the cryptos with “high volatility, no upside potential [and] low to non-existent liquidity.” His own law firm has determined that the promoters of the coin are in Belarus — “far from the reach of SEC jurisdiction.”
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