03/27/2026
Bitcoin is entering the housing market.
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Fannie Mae is the backbone of American mortgage finance and it has been under government conservatorship since 2008.
It will now accept bitcoin as mortgage collateral for the first time.
Coinbase and Better Home & Finance partnered to launch a product that allows investors to pledge bitcoin or USDC for a down payment on a Fannie Mae home loan without liquidating their position.
Here’s how it works:
Brokers take a regular Fannie Mae mortgage, and a separate loan backed by crypto
Bitcoin collateral must cover 250% of the down payment, while USDC needs 125%
Rates are 0.5-1.5 percentage points above a typical 30-year loan
No margin calls
According to the announcement, mortgage terms still hold even if bitcoin’s price declines, but the collateral behind the down payment loses value.
With this new product, the forced-selling mechanism is gone.
But it still presents a risk as far as weaving crypto volatility into mortgage financing at scale.
Democratic lawmakers have already raised concerns about volatile digital assets entering the housing market.
Historically, crypto-backed lending has broken down as soon as falling prices force borrowers to sell.
This new structure is designed to break that cycle.
Tens of millions of Americans hold crypto.
Many accumulated bitcoin well below its $126,000 all-time high reached last October and have no interest in selling into a tax bill, even with the asset trading roughly 43% lower from its peak.
Fannie Mae, for its part, largely sets the pace of the housing market. That means the smaller players across the rest of the industry will likely follow this move with similar forays into crypto.
The spot bitcoin ETF approval in 2024 opened crypto to public markets.
This latest development opens it up to the housing market.
The stakes now feel much higher.
