Coinbase and Better make crypto-backed home loans widely available
RWA & Tokenization ·
The two companies have moved their Bitcoin-collateral mortgage product from a limited pilot to general availability for US borrowers, with Coinbase One members getting a 1% credit toward closing costs.
Coinbase and Better Home & Finance, the Nasdaq-listed digital mortgage lender trading under the ticker BETR, have opened their token-backed mortgage product to a wider pool of applicants, according to The Block. The offering lets borrowers pledge Bitcoin held with Coinbase toward a home down payment, and the companies say it does not carry margin calls, distinguishing it from earlier crypto-collateral loan structures that could force liquidation if asset prices dropped.
The product traces back to a March 2026 announcement in which Better, Coinbase, and Fannie Mae introduced what they called the first Fannie Mae-eligible mortgage backed by tokenized collateral, allowing digital assets to count toward funding a purchase within a conforming, agency-backed loan. That structure set it apart from prior crypto-mortgage attempts, which were mostly offered by private lenders outside the conforming channel and lacked government-sponsored-enterprise backing. Better and Coinbase later confirmed they had funded the first such Fannie Mae-backed mortgage using Bitcoin as collateral, moving the concept from pilot to a completed transaction.
The rollout announced now extends that same mechanism beyond the initial test cases to general availability, with Coinbase One subscribers receiving a 1% closing-cost credit as an added incentive. Bitcoin and USDC are the collateral types cited for funding down payments under the arrangement, tying the mortgage directly to assets custodied on Coinbase rather than requiring borrowers to liquidate holdings into cash before applying.
The expansion is being read as a signal of how traditional housing finance may begin absorbing crypto assets as usable collateral rather than treating them purely as speculative holdings subject to separate risk assessment. It also arrives amid broader activity around tokenized real-world assets and stablecoin infrastructure, areas where market participants have been debating how conventional financial rails adapt to onchain assets.
What remains unclear is how large the borrower pool has grown since the initial funded loan, what underwriting standards apply to volatile collateral like Bitcoin at general-availability scale, and whether Fannie Mae's eligibility criteria will evolve as more lenders potentially seek to offer similar products.