Better Home & Finance Holding Co. said it plans to roll out a crypto-backed mortgage designed to let some homebuyers fund their down payments without selling the cryptocurrency they already own. The company said it will launch the offering with Coinbase, and it expects the product to be available in the next three months.
The proposal comes with limits on how borrowers can use digital assets for mortgage financing. Better said the mortgage would allow qualifying borrowers to pledge certain holdings as collateral for their down payments and to transfer those holdings to Coinbase, rather than requiring the borrowers to sell their crypto for cash.
Better’s CEO, Vishal Garg, said in a company release that the partnership “introduces a new pathway to realizing the American Dream” for people who own digital assets, and he framed the effort as building on Better’s goal of making homeownership more accessible.
The company said the crypto-backed mortgage is designed in accordance with Fannie Mae guidelines. Better said that structure would make the mortgages eligible for “significantly lower interest rates” than other crypto-backed loans, while Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac buy mortgages that meet their risk criteria from banks to support liquidity in the housing market.
Better said the mortgage would not require borrowers to sell crypto to make the down payment, a design the companies said is intended to help investors avoid losing potential future gains that can come from selling holdings. The company said borrowers’ crypto collateral would be at risk if they fail to make mortgage payments for 60 days, when the collateral could be liquidated.
The companies also said only Bitcoin and USDC would be eligible as collateral. They said USDC is a cryptocurrency typically bought and sold for $1, and they said those are the only types of cryptocurrencies borrowers will be able to pledge under the planned mortgage product.
The AP report also noted that using cryptocurrency for home purchases has so far remained limited. It cited a National Association of Realtors survey of people who bought a home between July 2024 and June 2025, in which 1% of down-payment makers said they used proceeds from the sale of crypto.
Regulators have also been looking at how digital assets should factor into mortgage risk assessments. The report said that last June, the head of the Federal Housing Finance Agency ordered Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to prepare a proposal for consideration of crypto as an asset for reserves when the agencies assess risks in single-family home loans.
Shares of Better Home & Finance Holding rose 5.4% on Thursday, while Coinbase shares fell 4.3%.