For the first time in the mortgage industry’s storied history of evaluating what constitutes a “real” asset—a classification that has traditionally excluded everything from Beanie Babies to baseball cards, yet somehow embraced the phantom equity in a 2008 McMansion—federal regulators have decreed that cryptocurrency can now bolster a homebuyer’s financial profile without the inconvenient step of converting it to actual dollars.
Federal regulators have finally deemed cryptocurrency a legitimate asset, sparing homebuyers the inconvenient reality of liquidating their digital fortunes.
FHFA Director William Pulte’s June 25, 2025 directive ordering Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to develop crypto asset inclusion proposals represents a seismic shift in mortgage underwriting philosophy. The government-sponsored entities, which control approximately half of the $12 trillion U.S. home loan market, must now craft frameworks recognizing digital currencies as legitimate collateral—provided, naturally, that these volatile digital tokens reside on properly regulated U.S. exchanges rather than languishing in some anarchist’s hardware wallet.
The regulatory transformation addresses a peculiar modern predicament: homebuyers holding substantial cryptocurrency portfolios previously faced the Kafkaesque requirement of liquidating their digital assets before mortgage closing, fundamentally penalizing them for choosing Bitcoin over Berkshire Hathaway. This policy shift promises to expand the pool of qualified borrowers while simultaneously acknowledging that Americans increasingly view cryptocurrencies as legitimate alternatives to traditional investments. The move also recognizes how institutional adoption has driven cryptocurrencies from speculative trading instruments toward mainstream financial assets with tangible utility.
The devil, as always, lurks in the implementation details. Only cryptocurrencies stored on U.S.-regulated centralized exchanges meeting federal compliance standards qualify for mortgage asset calculations—a restriction that effectively excludes the decentralization purists who store their digital wealth in personal wallets. This compromise reflects regulators’ eternal struggle between innovation accommodation and risk mitigation.
The implications extend beyond individual borrowers to the broader housing market dynamics. By recognizing crypto assets without mandatory conversion, the policy potentially increases mortgage origination volume and housing market liquidity. Whether this development represents enlightened regulatory evolution or another chapter in America’s ongoing relationship with speculative asset bubbles remains an open question. The directive supports the administration’s broader vision to position America as the crypto capital of the world.
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac now face the challenging task of developing asset verification protocols for investments that exist primarily as cryptographic proof-of-ownership—a technological puzzle that would have seemed like science fiction when these institutions were originally chartered to stabilize Depression-era housing markets. The effective immediately order emphasizes the regulatory urgency behind this unprecedented shift in mortgage assessment criteria.
