Athenic is a DeFi retirement account creation tool that helps eliminate annual taxes on your investment gains.
When you invest through a DeFi IRA (Individual Retirement Account), your gains are tax-advantaged. This helps eliminate the annual taxes that you would be paying each year on your investment gains.
IRA providers such as Fidelity, Charles Schwab, E*Trade, TD Ameritrade, or Merrill Edge do not offer access to DeFi investments despite most of them being IRS compliant. In other words, you can only invest it what they give you access to. So far, they only enable exposure to the top few tokens (i.e. bitcoin & eth).
Athenic gives you a self-custodial account which can be used via most of the popular wallets like MetaMask or Phantom. This gives you the tax-advantages of a retirement account with the flexibility of a self-custodial wallet.
Some IRA providers such as Robinhood and Alto offer token investments, but investments might be artificially limited to what their portals give you access to.
Not only does Athenic offer you un-restricted access to the entire token ecosystem across five of the most popular chains, but we also empower you to directly engage with DeFi protocols, staking, yield farming, and whatever else you can find.
Athenic is made for Degens who want to be tax-savvy without being limited to only token investments.
Your self-custodial account holds your assets directly. You control them by adding these accounts to your favorite wallet such as MetaMask or Phantom.
Yes, Athenic is non-custodial. You retain full control over your assets—we don’t manage your funds. Your DeFi IRA is built around a self-managed account that connects to your own wallet, ensuring you stay in charge at all times.
You can store your private keys by whichever method you choose. We recommend keeping any backups of your private keys offline.
When private keys are generated for your account, they are kept in a secure enclave which we are unable to access them without your approval.
If you lose access to your wallet provider, you can re-connect your account to a new wallet with your private keys which can be found from on our webapp.
We currently support five of the most popular blockchains:
- Ethereum
- Solana
- Base
- Avalance
- Polygon
When you create your account you select one of these blockchains. Multi-blockchain accounts are in our development pipeline.
The account is self-custodial and self-directed. We do not limit your investments.
Yes. The account is self-directed and not limited to any specific type of blockchain investment.
No, we do not restrict which DeFi protocols you can use.
Like any self-custodial account, any gas fees will be paid by the account.
Yes. Contact team@athenic.xyz for help doing that.
Yes!
Your account receives the full tax-advantages of having an IRA.
No. Annual compliance is based on the current value of the account.
Yes. Forms needed for tax reporting will be provided to you each year.
As a self-directed account, it is your responsibility to ensure that investments within the account are IRS compliant.
Yes. You can import your account in most of the major wallet providers such as MetaMask or Phantom.
Yes. You can have your account imported into and controlled by multiple wallets.
You can use your wallet of choice to enable you to easily sign transactions.
DeFi carries risk, including the possibility that a protocol could be exploited. If that happens, any assets held within that specific protocol may be affected. Athenic doesn’t have custody of your assets—we simply provide the tools to access and manage them—so you remain in control. We encourage users to diversify, do their own research, and use battle-tested protocols. We’re also working to integrate optional risk mitigation tools like insurance and protocol risk scoring in the future.
No—Athenic is not a registered financial institution, custodian, or investment advisor. We’re a technology platform that gives you direct access to DeFi tools and self-directed IRA infrastructure. You stay in control of your assets, and we don’t hold or manage your funds.
Your DeFi IRA with Athenic is structured as a legally compliant self-directed IRA, held in your name and administered through a qualified custodian. While Athenic itself is not a custodian or financial institution, we partner with regulated entities to ensure your IRA meets IRS guidelines. Legally, the assets are yours—we simply provide the interface to access and manage them through DeFi.
Your assets remain safe. Athenic does not hold custody of your funds—we provide access to your self-directed IRA and DeFi tools. If Athenic were to shut down, you would still retain full legal ownership of your IRA through the custodian, and you could continue managing your assets directly or through another platform. Because you stay in control of your wallet and your account is in your name, you’re never locked in.
Yes—self-directed IRAs are legal and have been used for alternative assets like real estate and private equity for decades. A DeFi IRA follows the same structure, but instead of traditional investments, it gives you access to decentralized finance protocols. As long as the account is properly set up and managed through an IRS-compliant custodian, a DeFi IRA is fully legal.
The structure of accounts is known as a self-directed checkbook IRA. Inside the IRA is an LLC which you are the sole member of. This LLC acts as an investment vehicle and holds the self-custodial blockchain accounts.
Yes, log in to your account and click your profile at the bottom.
You can begin closing your account from our platform or contact our team for more support. Funds in the account will be off-ramped into your bank account.
